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AFTER DEATH-WHAT? 



Hell and Salvation 



Considered in the Light of Science and 
Philosophy. 



BY 

s 

REV. W. H. PLATT, 
Rector of Grace Church, San Francisco. 



Second Edition— Revised and Enlarged. 

From three Lectures delivered in Grace Church, San Fran- 
cisco, January 13th, 20th, 27th, 1878. 



A. L. Bancroft & Company, 

San Francisco, Cal. 



#8 

Y- 



Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1878, by 

A. EOMAN & CO., 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



Bacon & Company, Printers, 

Kxcelsior Office, Corner Clay and Sansome Streets, 
San Francisco. 



TO THE 



Congregation of Prace pHURCH, 

SAU FRAHCISCO, 

^his Volume 

Is Affectionately Dedicated by 

THEIR PASTOR. 



ERRATA. 

Page vii, sixth line, for true read brute. 
Page 3, twelfth line, for matter read Being. 
Page 15, seventh line, for religion read science. 
Page 83. The fifth paragraph on this page should read : 
"I suppose," remarked the preacher, " as Biichner says 
that, I ought to understand what it means," etc. 



CONTENTS, 



I. — Pain (Punishment) as an Effect of Violated Law. 

1. Is the human soul immortal ? 

(a.) Immortality through the persistence of type. 

The human type. 

The true type. 
(6.) Immortality through the persistence of conscious- 
ness. 

Consciousness essentially not matter. 

Consciousness survives as the fittest. 
(c.) Immortality through the persistence of force. 

The human mind as force. 

The brute mind as force. 

Brutes individuals 3 not persons. 

2. The Law of Affinity proves a Hell. 

3. The Law of Association proves it. 

4. The Law of Growth proves it. 

5. The Law of Propagation proves it. 

6. The Law of Involution proves it. 

7. The Law of Evolution proves it. 

II. — Pain (Punishment) used as a Present Means by 
God the Father. 

1. False Ideas of the Fatherhood of God. 

2. True Ideas of the Fatherhood of God. 

(a.) God uses Pain as a Present Teacher. 
(6.) God uses Pain as a Present Corrective. 
(c.) God uses Pain as a Present Restraint. 
III. — Pain (Punishment) Endless as a Result of Char- 
acter — Man's Own Act. 



CONTENTS. 



IV. — Salvation, God's Act in One of Three Ways. 

1. As a Destiny. 

(a. ) Universal at Death. 

(6.) Universal by Final Restoration. 

2. As an Achievement of Man. 

3. As a Gift from Christ. 

Y. — The Skeptic as a Mourner. 



y^FTEt| pEATH— y^HAT? 



I. 



Pain {Punishment) Considered as 

an Evolved Effect of 

Impersonal Law. 

Let me give an outline of a symposium or 
conversation that is not altogether imaginary, 
between a christian preacher and a skeptical 
scientist. Instead of skepticism being diffident 
of its doubts, it is now confident and obtrusive. 
The scientist boldly asks the preacher why he 
continues to preach the old fashioned hell. " Do 
you not know," he says, " that intelligent people 
now laugh at your lake of fire and brimstone, 
your devil with horns and dragon tail, and all 
that sort of stuff ?" 
1 



AFTER DEATH— WHAT? 



"The Bible," says the preacher, "proves 



"Nothing to me," interrupted the skeptic ; 
" the science of nature is the only revelation that 
we can trust. The critical study of the Bible 
has revealed its many glaring inconsistencies." 

" Only to those," replied the preacher, "who 
wish and are resolved to find or make them. 
Hitherto, until the revival of bald materialism, 
those who have known the most about nature, 
such as Copernicus, Newton and Agassiz, have 
believed the most about the Bible and God. 
Even now, in England, ' out of every ten scientific 
men, seven call themselves members of the 
established churches of England, Scotland, or 
of the now disestablished church of Ireland; and 
two belong to the sects. Only one belongs to no 
church/ * 

" Religion is not alarmed because science can 
explain so much, but because, with its thousand 
and one theories, it can explain so little. The 
more true knowledge, the more enlightened 
belief. And what can we trust in the con- 

1 "Men of Science," by Galton, p. 95. 



UNCERTAINTIES OF SCIENCE. 3 

elusions of material science, as to questions 
above matter, more than in statements of reve- 
lation ? How inconsistent are your theories of 
nature ! No two physicians agree as to the 
cause, phase, or treatment of disease ; no two 
scientists " 

"And no two theologians," sarcastically in- 
terposed the skeptic, "agree about dogmas." 

" If you scientists differ about finite matter, 
which you can see," replied the preacher, "is 
it remarkable that we theologians should differ 
about infinite mattter, which we cannot see ? 
Materialism neither explains matter, proposes 
a morality, or admits an accountability for con- 
duct. Christian theologies may differ, but their 
moral aim is one. If both theology and materi- 
alism are uncertain, let us choose that which 
leads to the best life. The blindnes of us the- 
ologians does not make you scientists see. If 
science is required for the practical arts, so is 
Bible wisdom necessary to form moral char- 
acter and social relations. Neither chemistry 
nor a knowledge of the multiplication table can 
make men morally better. ' The intellect has 



AFTER, DEATH— WHAT? 



no morality. ' You explore matter by the cru- 
cible, the scales, and the scalpel. We prove 
the principles of religion and the claim of reve- 
lation by the purity of the domestic relations 
which they appoint, the elevation of personal 
character which they effect, and the best moral 
movements of the world, which they inspire. If 

God can write chronologies of physical changes 

• 

on the rocks, why can he not write rules of con- 
duct elsewhere and in human language ? But, 
as you object to the authority of revelation, I 
propose to prove by your own admitted prin- 
ciple of science, that there is a local hell. " 

" You certainly cannot look me in the face," 
replied the skeptic, " and say that you can 
prove, by any evidence respected by science, 
that there is, hereafter, a local hell ? If there 
be such a place, where is it ? '' 

" It is where the incorrigible sinner is, any- 
where and everywhere, out of heaven. Surely 
that is place enough. But the reality is more 
important than the place. Locality is not essen- 
tial to suffering," replied the preacher; "but 
not to evade the question, I undertake to prove, 



IS HELL A FIHE? 



by principles of science admitted by you, that 
there is a local hell." 

"And you agree to put in the brimstone, 
too ?" ejaculated the skeptic. 

"If not that, something worse," replied the 
preacher. " When you have heard me through, 
you will yourself prefer the brimstone." 

" You are jesting, surely. Anyhow, the 
brimstone is only figurative fuel." 

"The figure never equals the fact. Figures 
of speech are only used when plain language 
would fail to convey a full impression of the 
truth. The conclusions of science establish a 
hell in fact to which the figurative one of lake 
and brimstone is a cool luxury." 

"Are you in earnest ? " inquired the skeptic, 
" or is this jesting ? " 

"There is no jest in the subject," answered 
the preacher ; " and suffering ifi mind or body 
is no jest ; nor is a mistake in this matter a 
jest. It is a question upon which neither nature, 
in her inexorable arrangement of things, nor 
humanity in its wailing miserere, can afford to 
jest." 



6 AFTER DEATH— WHAT 1 

"All that is very pretty preaching,' ' remarked 
the skeptic ; "but let us come to business.'' 

"Agreed." 

"How can you prove the hell of which you 
so confidently speak ? " 

"First," said the preacher, "let me ask, 
even at the risk of being diverted for the time 
into several side questions, if you, a Pyrrhon- 
ist, denying everying and affirming nothing, 
acknowledge any authority in religion or sci- 
ence ? " 

"I believe in the authority of science, and 
care not a fig about religion." 

"What do you understand by science?" 
asked the preacher. 

" Science," answered the skeptic, "is simply 
knowledge classified, systematized, made or- 
derly, impersonal, and exact, instead of being 
left unclassified, fragmentary, personal, and 
inexact. Comte calls it common sense meth- 
odized and extended. 1 It is, first, a logic of 
search applicable to all departments of knowl- 
edge ; and, secondly, a doctrine or body of 

1 Lewes, August No. Popular Science Monthly, 1878, p. 413. 



CREDENTIALS OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 7 

truths and hypotheses, embracing the results 
of search." 1 

" Then," said the preacher, " we ask you 
to study the science of religion." 

"But," said the skeptic, "religion is not a 
science, because its test is faith, and not 
reason." 

"The test of this as of all other science," 
replied the preacher, "is both faith and 
reason." 

" But the faith of theology and the faith of 
science are very different in their credentials," 
answered the skeptic. 2 

" Wherein do they differ?" asked the 
preacher. 

"The former is a reliance on the truth of 
principles handed down by tradition, of which 
no verification is possible, no examination per- 
missible," was the reply. 

"Exactly the reverse is true," interposed 
the preacher. "By their fruits shall ye know 
them. Religion is not a theory, but is above 

1 Lewes, August No. Popular Science Monthly, 1878, p. 413. 

2 Ibid. 



AFTER DEATH— WHAT? 



all else a practice and a life. Each one must 
make the experimental test in and for himself, 
and only for himself. A friend may possibly 
be found to atone for man's unholiness, but 
every man must seek to be holy in himself. 
Unlike material science, where the tests can 
be made only by those of special skill, the 
tests of religion can and must be made by the 
most uneducated, each one for himself. Every 
principle of religion is verifiable in the indi- 
vidual experience of man and the history of 
civilization ; and each man has the credential 
in himself. 1 

" It is you scientists who are credulous. 
There are no superstitions that are so supersti- 
tious as the superstitions of scientific men. 2 
Science has its faith, impossible of verification, 
no less than religion. At most, only the facts 
of science can be verified, not scientific opinion. 
How often do scientists hold quite different 
opinions on the same fact of nature." 

1 ' O, make but trial of His love, 
Experience will decide 
How blest are they, and only they, 
Who in His truth confide.' 

2 Beard, Pop. Sci. Monthly, July, 1878, p. 338. 



SUPERSTITIONS OF SCIENCE. 9 

"It is true," admitted the skeptic, "we 
believe in the law of gravitation, though we 
individually have never opened the 'Principia,' 
and could not understand it if we did ; but we 
rely upon those who can understand it, and who 
have found its teachings in harmony with fact. 
We believe in the measurement of the velocity 
of light, though ignorant of the methods by 
which the velocity is measured. We trust 
those who have sought and found. If we dis- 
trust them, the search is open to us as to them. 
The mariner trusts to the indications of the 
compass, without pretending to know how 
these indications were discovered, but assured 
by constant experience that they guide the 
ship safely. Its credentials are conformity 
with experience." x 

" The same are the credentials of religion,' ' 
replied the preacher. "By their fruits shall 
ye know them." " Whoso doeth my will shall 
know of the doctrine. Faith is shown by 
works." • 

1 George Henry Lewes, in August No. Popular Science 
Monthly, p. 416. 
1* 



10 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? 

"The credentials of religious truth are the 
same and as certain as those of scientific truth. 
Again, I ask, wherein do they differ ? Both are 
established by the law of sufficient reason. 
Reasoning inductively, you prove by combus- 
tion the existence of an invisible element you 
call oxygen. Reasoning inductively, we prove 
by the phenomena before our eyes the exist- 
ence of an invisible Creator, we call God. 
What do you know of your so-called evolution- 
ary power, that we do not know of our creating 
God ? We both reason a posteriori, from effects 
back to cause. The logic and the credentials 
are the same." 

"What," a?sked the skeptic, "are your cre- 
dentials of the so-called miracles ? " 

" What are the credentials of any past scien- 
tific experiment and discovery?" answered the 
preacher. "We accept the statement of past 
events or acts of individuals in the history of 
religion, as you do similar statements in the 
history of science, upon credible testimony. 
They admit of no other verification in either 
case. The testimony of the witnesses to the 



THE FAITHS OF SCIENCE. 11 

miracles is sustained by the strongest possible 
corroboration. I know of no valid answer to 
Paley's proposition, 'that there is satisfactory 
evidence that many, pretending to be original 
witnesses of the Christian miracles, passed 
their lives in labors, dangers, and sufferings, 
voluntarily undertaken and undergone in at- 
testation of the accounts which they delivered, 
and solely in consequence of their belief of the 
truth of those accounts, and that they submit- 
ted, from the same motive, to new rules of con- 
duct. ' ]STo other proof is possible, or necessary. 
If it is not believed, no proof would be, though 
the witness rose from the dead to offer it. The 
denial of its sufficiency indicates a mind not 
open to conviction; and all I can say is, that 
the responsibility of rejecting it is yours, not 
mine. We test eternal principles in religion as 
you do fundamental principles in nature, by 
experience and observation, but with this dif- 
ference: you necessarily must takfc many princi- 
ples upon the authority of others, whereas each 
man can and must test the whole of religious 
truth in and for himself. Those who have 



12 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? 

made experimental tests in both religion and 
physical science, and have died, cannot be 
brought to the stand as living witnesses; but 
they have, in both eases alike, left directions to 
the world how to verify, each for himself, 
whether the statement of principles they make 
be true or not. The teachings of the Bible 
imploringly urge mankind to prove them by 
experimental tests. The tests of science in- 
volve no change of moral conduct, but those of 
religion do, and there is the rub. For this 
reason, they will neither make experiments in 
religious science, nor credit the testimony of 
those who do. History, both biographical and 
political, records the tests, but you refuse to 
verify them. With verification unattempted, 
why should you reject the doctrines of Paul in 
religion, and accept, without verification, those 
of Newton in science ? " 

" But the teachings of Newton have been 
verified, and can be by any one." 

" And the doctrines of Paul have been veri- 
fied, and can be by any one. No, no ! the 
secret is, that the verification of religious prin- 



THE CLAIMS OF RELIGION. 13 

ciples is for the heart and conscience, and 
affects conduct ; while that of the principles of 
science is for the intellect, and requires no 
moral self-discipline." 

" Do you think," asked the skeptic," that 
history," especially mediaeval, will verify your 
claim for religion ? You had the world all to 
yourself, and why did you not do more for civ- 
ilization ? " 

" Religion will accept the moral balance 
sheet of civilization. Give it its credits, and 
it will stand by its debits. If you plank over 
a field of sprouting wheat, you can expect no 
harvest. Give religion as favorable conditions 
as you demand for science, and it will produce 
corresponding fruits. Environment is for relig- 
ion as much as for science. At all times, the 
best influence as lo conduct was and is religion. 
Science claims no influence whatever over con- 
duct or the organization of society. It is at 
most, knowledge, not authority. If, in the 
middle ages, religion did not advance society as 
much as you think it ought to have done, you 
must show what could have advanced it more." 



14 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? 

" Science would have done better, if you 
would have let it," replied the skeptic. 

"Please specify a little," remarked the 
preacher. 

" Did you not crush out philosophy ? " asked 
the skeptic. 

" Draper says it died a natural death," re- 
plied the preacher. 

" Certainly he does not say so in his ' Conflict 
between Religion and Science/' said the 
skeptic. 

" That book of Draper's," replied the preach- 
er, " is most discreditable to his literary hon- 
esty. There is hardly a speaking acquaintance 
botween the title and the text. The title is 
4 Conflict between Religion and Science.' In 
the preface, he says : ' I have had little to say 
respecting the two great Christian confessions, 
the Protestant and Greek churches. As to the 
latter, it has never, since the restoration of sci- 
ence, arrayed itself in opposition to the advance- 
ment of knowledge. On the contrary, it has 
always met it with welcome. * * * In 
speaking of Christianity, reference is generally 



NO KEW THEOLOGY. 15 

made to the Roman Church. None of the 
Protestant churches has ever occupied a posi- 
tion so imperious, none has ever had such wide- 
spread political influence. For the most part, 
they have been averse to constraint.' He 
should then have called his book a conflict 
between religion and the Roman Church. But 
that is a worn-out discussion, and such a title 
would not sell the book so well. In his ' Intel- 
lectual Development of Europe,' he opens his 
sixth chapter, by saying : ' It is a melancholy 
picture I have to present — the old age and death 
of Greek philosophy. The strong man of Aris- 
totelianism and Stoicism is sinking into the 
supernatural dotard. * * * In this closing 
scene, no more do we find the vivid faith of 
Plato, the mature intellect of Aristotle, the 
manly self-control of Zeno. Greek philosophy 
is ending in garrulity and mysticism. It is 
leaning for help on the conjurer, juggler and 
high priest of nature. * * * The Roman 
soldier is about to take the place of the thinker. 
* * * Under the shadow of the Pyramids, 
Greek philosophy was born. After many wan- 



16 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? 

derings, for a thousand years, round the shores 
of the Mediterranean, it came back to its native 
place, and under the shadow of the Pyramids, 
it died.' Remember, Draper admits that phil- 
osophy, which then was synonymous with sci- 
ence and all learning, died of old age. It did 
not die in any conflict with religion. Religion 
had nothing to do with its death, though much 
to do in supplying its place." 

" Any way," said the skeptic, " the old creed 
and religion must give way. There is just as 
certainly a change in the whole religious 
thought of the race, as the sun shines. Doc- 
trines taught fifty years ago are neither taught 
now as they then were, nor believed as they 
then were believed." x 

" Which doctrine is to be changed ? " asked 
the preacher. " Will you change the precept- 
ive, historical, esthetical, or social element ? 
Are not the Ten Commandments all right ? 
What will you change in the Lord's Prayer ? 
In the Sermon on the Mount ? In the Promises ? 
What will you change in this sentence : ; God, 

iBeecher's Lecture, S. E., Aug. 24, 1878. 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS AND SCIENCE. 17 

who i3 rich in mercy ? ' What will you change 
in this sentence : ' God so loved the world 
that He gave His only begotten Son to die, that 
whoso believeth in Him should not perish, but 
have everlasting life ? ' In what theological 
seminary, in what system of divinity, in what 
Articles of Faith, are they taught differently 
now from what they were fifty years ago, 
whether in America or England ? The change 
is in your own mind only. Theological teach- 
ing is unchanged by those who teach theology 
at all. To deny is not to modify. Truth is 
denied now, as it ever has been, and ever will 
be." 

u When science," says the skeptic, " has fair- 
ly mastered the principles of moral relations, 
as it has mastered the principles of physical 
relations, all knowledge will be incorporated in 
an homogeneous doctrine, rivaling that of the 
old theologies in its comprehensiveness, &nd 
surpassing it in the authority of its credentials. 
Christian ethics will then no longer mean ethics 
founded on the principles of christian theology, 
but on the principles expressing the social rela- 



18 AFTEE DEATH— WHAT? 

tions and duties of men in christianized society. 
Then, and not till then, will the conflict be- 
tween theology and science finally cease.' ' * 

" Christianized society," said the preacher, 
" is formed by social relations and duties, orig- 
inated in and animated by Christian theology. 
All theology is only a system of truth, an- 
nounced in part by revelation, and accepted 
and certified by reason and experience. You 
set up the name — theology — only to quarrel 
with it. Theology is simply knowledge about 
the cause of things, systematized and classified, 
whether you derive that knowledge from na- 
ture or revelation. You evolutionary scientists 
have a theology so far as you admit a Power, 
personal or impersonal ; and your impersonal- 
power-science is no more verifiable than the 
theology based upon a personal Being. In 
brief, religion knows as much of its God as 
science knows of its Cause. There is a point, 
almost anywhere towards the beginning of 
things, where science confesses it knows noth- 
ing, and can verify nothing : such as what is 

1 Lewes, Popular Science Monthly, August, 1878, p. 420. 



UNCERTAINTIES OF SCIENCE. 19 

matter, what is mind, what is the connection 
between the two, what is light, what is grav- 
itation ? The conjectures of science are as 
numerous as the phases of religious faith. One 
great difference is, that the faith of religion 
leads to good conduct, while the conjectures of 
science leave us in spiritual despair. The 
knowledge of religion is as classified, exact, 
and verifiable as that of science." 

" As Darwin says, 1 'so profound is our igno- 
rance, and so high our presumption/ that I ask, 
what can we trust in the assumption of material 
science as to the origin and destiny of things, 
more than to the statements of the Bible, 
which we accept as revelations ? Your theo- 
ries of nature change with every teacher, and 
the last is presented as true by showing that 
those before it were false. How long has it 
been since Newton's emission theoiy of light, 
now discarded, was accepted as scientific cer- 
tainty ? Winchell says that ' progressive 
knowledge implies much unlearning.' When 
will scientific opinion be so complete and 

1 Origin of Species, Chap. III. 



20 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? 

verified, and with credentials so certain, that 
the progress and happiness of the world will 
need no religious faith ? " 

" Science claims to be verifiable knowledge, 
and we all wish it could verify itself more than 
it does ; but how limited is the range of what 
we really do know, and how unlimited the 
boundaries of what we do not know ! Religion, 
more than science, mourns over the insignifi- 
cance of human knowledge; but while science 
stops in despair at the operation of natural laws 
in this world, religion, accepting the doctrine 
of the eternal continuity of law, follows them 
on, in hope, into the next. The more light in 
science, more will be the light in religion. Let 
us have light around us, above us, and within 
us. Darkness is perilous. Science builds 
bridges, but they fall, killing thousands. It 
sends out fleets upon the ocean, but they sink. 
Pestilences come, and medicine fails. Igno- 
rance leaves all men to die. Nature is as 
inscrutable now, as in the ages past. Then, 
as we have no science that can avert death 
here, let us not reject a religion that reveals to 



UNCERTAINTIES OF SCIENCE. 21 

us a rescue from it hereafter. Science now 
claims that it has divorced superstition from 
religion. Let us hope that it is so. But, 
rejecting moral responsibility, the mystery of 
nature and blind law is put by the materialist 
for the mystery of a God and His providence. 
For the hope of faith, we have the despair of 
skepticism. Is the eternity of matter less a 
mystery than the eternity of God ? And is 
not what we call science as ignorant of one as 
the other? Science is as blind to that which is 
behind us, as it is to that which is before us. 
'It is incumbent upon us evolutionists/ says 
one, 1 i to prove our opinion ; yet, it must be 
admitted that, at present, we are far from hav- 
ing established a connected chain of evidence 
in support of it. ' Instead of future immortality 
to be hoped for, we are offered, as the conclu- 
sion of science, a future of annihilations which 
cannot be proved. Science becomes unscien- 
tific in speaking confidently where it must be 
ignorant, and should be silent. With a wise 

1 Dr. Montgomery's Art. Monera, Pop. Sci. Monthly, Aug., 
1878. 



22 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? 

and more modest spirit, Virchow, speaking 
recently to a most learned assembly in Munich, 
said of the theory of spontaneous generation 
and the descent of man: 'We ought to say: 
Do not take this for established truth. Be 
prepared to find it otherwise. Only for the 
moment we are of opinion that it may be true.' 
We know the universe but in part ; and in the 
uncertain, limited, inexact, and variable results 
of all investigations, there is no such thing as 
science. Theory is not knowledge. Assump- 
tion is not proof. Words are not facts. Specu- 
lations are not laws." 

44 Is it not a law that heat expands all bodies 
and cold contracts them ? " asked the skeptic. 

"No," replied the preacher ; " India-rubber 
contracts under heat, and water, below thirty- 
nine and one-half degrees, instead of contract- 
ing actually expands, as we all know from our 
broken pitchers on a very cold morning. 
Jevons l declares that it would be easy to point 
out an almost infinite number of other unex- 
plained anomalies." 

1 Principles of Science, Vol. II, p. 341. 



UNCERTAINTIES OF SCIENCE. 23 

" You venture upon a very bold position, to 
say that there is no science," remarked the 
skeptic. 

"Let us see," said the preacher. "What 
do you mean by science ? " 

"A provable knowledge of nature and of 
man," answered the skeptic. 

"That I supposed would be your answer. 
But your mistake is in speaking of science as 
knowledge ; whereas it is only a method to 
acquire knowledge," remarked the preacher. 
" You scientists agree upon nothing. In what- 
ever direction you look, there is speculation, 
disagreement, and confusion. As to social in- 
stitutions, Daniel Webster said: 1 i For my 
part, though I like investigations of political 
questions, I give up what is called the science 
of political economy. There is no such science. 
There are no rules so fixed and invariable as 
that their aggregate constitutes a science. I 
believe that I have recently run over twenty 
volumes ; and from the whole, if I should pick 
out with one hand all the mere truisms, and 

1 Bix"by on Physical and Religious Knowledge, p. 170. 



24 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? 

with the other all the doubtful propositions, 
little would be left/ In chemistry there is 
great disagreement. There is now a contro- 
versy going on in the papers, between the city 
engineers and the boards of health, as to the 
gravity of sewer gases. One opinion is that 
they are light, and rise up into houses in spite 
of traps and other plumbing devices. Others, 
among whom is the chief engineer of New 
York, as reported by the papers, contend that 
unhealthy gases are the heaviest and sink to 
the lowest points, as shown by disease in the 
lower localities of cities. 1 As to metrical sys- 
tems of all kinds, it is only the simpler things 
that are open to even approximate measure- 
ment. 2 In the simplest natural phenomena, 
therefore, there will always be numberless fac- 
tors whose exact influence can never be ascer- 
tained. Until we know thoroughly the nature 

1 The Pacific Medical and Surgical Journal for September, 
1878, contains an article attacking the theory commonly re- 
ceived among physicians of the vegetable origin of malarious 
diseases, and arguing that the cause is to be found in the 
exposure of the body at night to cold, without proper cover- 
ing and preparation, thus causing a chill and a suppression of 
the cutaneous secretions. 

2Bixby, 174. 



UNCERTAINTIES OF SCIENCE. 25 

of matter, and the forces which produce its 
motions, says Thomson and Tait, it will be 
utterly impossible to submit to mathematical 
reasoning the exact conditions of any physical 
question. 1 Even physical astronomy, where the 
nearest approximation to actual conditions is 
found, is full of assumptions and neglect of 
numberless discrepancies. It is assumed in it, 
that the other millions of existing systems exert 
no perturbing influence on our system ; that 
the planets are perfect ellipsoids, with abso- 
lutely smooth surfaces and homogenous interi- 
ors : assumptions, part of them, certainly un- 
true, as every hill and mountain show, and the 
rest very doubtful. In regard to other branches 
of science, the same thing is true. Scientific 
investigators speak and calculate about homo- 
geneous substances, perfect fluids and gases, 
inflexible bars, etc., etc., but in reality there 
are no such things in nature. 2 We cannot, as 
Dr. W. O. Johnson recently warned his medi- 
cal brethren, describe the commonest chemical 
change going on in the body ; we cannot define 

iBixby, 174. 2 ibid. 



26 AFTEH DEATH— WHAT? 

the simplest of the vital processes. In the 
words of the chemist Berthollet, 'we know 
nothing of them thoroughly, since a perfect 
knowledge of any one of them involves a per- 
fect knowledge of all the laws and forces which 
combine to produce it/ 1 Where is there an 
absolute standard measure of either direction, 
time, weight, or extension ? What thorough 
knowledge or science is there of language, its 
origin, unity, structure, and elements? What 
two lexicographers pronounce alike ? How dif- 
ferently words are spelled ! Gould Brown, in 
his 'Grammar of Grammars,' tears all other 
grammarians utterly to pieces. No two phy- 
sicians agree. ' The glorious uncertainty of the 
law ' is proverbial. It is scarcely possible to 
find unanimity upon any legal proposition." 

" Are the standards of religion less varia- 
ble ? " inquired the skeptic. 

"That is not the question," replied the 
preacher. Those who live in glass houses 
should not throw stones. You claim to know 
when you do not. You allege the uncertainties 

i Bixby, 175. 



UNCERTAINTIES OF SCIENCE. 27 

of religion, while your own uncertainties are 
greater. You would tear down the altars of 
religious faith, when you worship at darker 
ones of your own. You would close the doors 
of the churches, but how much do you open the 
doors of nature ? You give the world a few 
variable, uncertain, and inexact rules of the 
practical arts, while you seek to persuade it 
that religion offers none for moral conduct. 
While the only certain truths are mental intui- 
tions, such as those of mathematics, you teach 
the world that matter is the preeminent object 
of study. You pretend to prepare man for 
life only, whereas he needs to be first prepared 
for death ; but you fail, in fact, to provide for 
either. But as you believe only in science, to 
science we will go." 

"And not use your Bible ? " 

"Not a word of it as argument," replied the 
preacher. "But, let me ask you, do you 
believe in a God ? " 

" I believe in a Power." 

" We will not quarrel about the name. Has 
your Power intelligence ? " 



28 AFTER DEATH— WHAT ? 

" You have my answer.' ' 

"Very well. What I call God, you call a 
Power. It is all the same. Names are nothing. 
Has your power revealed anything to you ? " 

" Only in nature — in the rocks, in the forms 
of matter. And there it stands for all ages, 
and each one can verify the message to abso- 
lute certainty. It has no fables in it. The 
geologist, like your Moses, can strike upon the 
rocks, and they will open to him the lesson 
written upon their imperishable leaves. The 
language in which their history is embalmed 
is for all ages and all races, one and the same." 

" Indeed ! " Do any two of you agree as to 
what the rocks say ? Until lately, during the 
brief existence of your so-called science, you 
vehemently said that the earth was formed 
under a law of uniformity, taking countless 
ages for the work. Now, we are as confidently 
told, and as more probable, that the rocks 
record the results of awful catastrophies, doing 
in one dreadful minute the changes before sup- 
posed to have occupied millenniums of time. 
According to your views, Nature has been here 



QUESTIONS ABOUT THE SOUL. 29 

more millions of years than can be enumerated 
in our arithmetic, and yet we find her a very 
coquettish sort of teacher. Nature is silent as 
to whether we should drink water or wine, eat 
flesh or vegetables, live in a hot or cool climate, 
as to what will in all cases cure, and what will 
in all cases kill, and when we die — 

" Ah," says the scientist, "that is the end 
of us." 

" Then you do not believe in the immortality 
of the soul ? " 

" Why, no ; of course not. What is the dif- 
ference between the death of a man and the 
death of a dog ? They both rot alike in the 
earth, and are lost to all knowledge. Why do 
you think the soul immortal ? " coijtinued the 
skeptic. " You never saw a soul." 

" Nor did you ever see an atom," remarked 
the preacher, u nor gravitation, nor oxygen ; 
and yet you do not doubt their existence." 

" But, how can a soul exist without the body? " 

" The existence of the soul out of the body 
is no greater mystery than the existence of the 
soul in the body." 



30 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? 

"It is a sufficient answer to say," replied the 
skeptic, " that we know of the soul within, but 
not without the body. We know nothing of 
the mind without brain-matter." 

" Do you know more of the mind with brain- 
matter ? Did mind create matter, or matter 
create mind ? " inquired the preacher. 

"I am inclined to admit that mind created 
matter." 

"If mind created matter, then there was a 
time when mind, in the abstract, was, and 
matter was not." 

"But suppose," remarked the skeptic, "that 
matter created mind ? " 

" Then," said the preacher, " matter is com- 
petent to continue in eternity what it began in 
time." 

"ITo doubt," said the skeptic, "that what- 
ever began mind in the past, is competent to 
carry it on in the future; but will it do it ? ,: 

"The law of continuity has brought all 
things on from the past, and what repeals that 
law as to the future ? Another law, univer- 
sally and invariably true, is, that to die is gain. 



QUESTIONS ABOUT THE. SOUL. 31 

All other things gain by dying ; why should 
not man? The soul is self-created, or it is 
created by another. If self-created, it is a 
power to itself forever. If it is created by an- 
other, then that other can take care of it in the 
future, as it has in the past. So, whether we 
exist of ourselves, or by the will of another, 
there is within and behind us an immortalizing 
power, looking, to say the least, in the direction 
of immortality, and showing its possibility." 

" But is there a probability of it ? " inquired 
the skeptic, with an incredulous tone. " When 
the body dies," he continued, "we see no soul 
depart, nor has one ever come back to give 
evidence of its disembodied existence." 

" In this, as in everything else," said the 
preacher, "the past answers for the future. 
Though no one can have a present experience, in 
the body, of *a future state out of the body, yet 
the reasoning from present physical phenomena 
to future physical phenomena is neither differ- 
ent nor more certain than that from the present 
existence of the soul to the continued future 
existence of the soul. The rising of the life- 



32 AFTER DEATH— WHAT ? 

bearing sun to-morrow cannot, in the nature of 
things, be a matter of observation to-day. In 
the omnipresence and omnipotence of law, by 
which both matter and mind continue to pro- 
gress, we have as much certainty of the con- 
tinuance of the individual immortality of the 
soul, as we have of anything in the future. 
But as jon doubt this, the first question to 
be settled is : 



1. Is the Soul of- Man Immortal ? 

" But, as we have said, we cannot possibly 
answer experimentally now a question whose 
solution must be entirely in the future. Do we 
not live now under a law of persistence, by 
which it is seen that we must live hereafter ? 
We exist now, and why should we not continue 
to exist ? We expect to exist to-morrow, and 
why should we not expect to exist one hundred 
or a million of years hence ? In the life, of the 
race, we have not only an expectation and a 
start in existence, prophetic of its continuance, 



IS THE SOUL IMMORTAL? 33 

but really, iu our present lives, as conscious 
individuals of a persistent race, we have already 
entered upon immortality. We are in the 
grasp of the law of persistence, and those who 
deny immortality, must prove conclusively that 
the law has been repealed and the grasp re- 
leased. In short, the doctrine of immortality 
cannot be disproved." 

"Hot can it be proved," replied the skeptic. 
" The individual has no immortality in him- 
self. His race or type only persists." 

" And how long do you admit that the race 
persists ? " asked the preacher. 

"I admit what I see," replied the skeptic. 
" We see that nature continues the race or type, 
but not the individual man." x 

" Very well," said the preacher, " so far as 
science can establish a principle of continuity 
or persistence of beings in time, it helps re- 
ligion to a line of reasoning, which points to 
their persistence in eternity. i We are, and 
therefore shall be. ' You say that the life of both 

1 " So careful of the type she seems, 

So careless of the single life."— Tennyson. 
2* 



34 AFTER DEATH— WHAT 1 

the race and individuals continues for this world 
only. We say that life once begun must be 
supposed to continue, not only in this world, but 
also in the next, unless it be proved to have 
ceased. You say that this proof has been made 
when the material body has no longer life in it. 
We say that the separation of the soul from the 
body cannot be a cessation of the existence of 
the soul, for this separation takes place every 
second, and yet we live. At no two moments 
do we have the same bodies, though ever the 
same souls. As our entire bodies are new every 
seven years, while our life and consciousness are 
one and the same, it is evident that we do not 
give up our consciousness when we give up our 
bodies, in what we call life, and why should we 
be held to give it up when we give up our 
bodies in what we call death ? 

(a.) " The persistence of the human type or 
race includes the persistence of the individual. 

" And yet, do you not see that the race goes 
on, while the individal dies ? 

" We must closely scrutinize the evidence of 



PERSISTENCE OF TYPE. 35 

our senses," replied the preacher." a We think 
we see the sun go round the world, whereas the 
world actually revolves round the sun. The 
senses often cheat us, even into superstition. 
We see nature at work around us ; and even if 
we perfectly understand what she is doing in 
the present, we cannot be certain of what she 
will do in the future. We see that decay pre- 
cedes reproduction ; now, may we not, as a con- 
clusion of a long line of analogies, expect death 
to prelude life ? If we, by theology, see as 
through a glass darkly as to a spiritual future, 
you have no more light as to nature and its 
interpretation by science." 

"And yet," said the skeptic, "when you 
attend the funeral of a friend, while the race 
survives all around, and in you, your own eyes 
tell you that your friend is dead." 

"All that my eyes tell me," replied the 
preacher, " is that the individual has been 
changed. We know that the death of a grain of 
wheat quickens it into a hundred-fold life. We 
see, but cannot comprehend the transforma- 



36 AFTER DEATH— WHAT ? 

tions of nature. We know no more of the 
mysterious change that takes man out of the 
world, than we do of the mystery that brought 
him into it. The curtain before us is no more 
impenetrable than the one behind us. In 
other words, death is no greater mystery than 
life. If the human race can continue in our 
sight, why not the individual out of sight ? 
Nature's hidden work is her greatest. 

" I do not say what the ultimate value to 
religion your doctrine of the persistence of race 
or type may be; but if it proves anything for 
science, it proves more for religion. Whatever 
you prove for all, you prove for each. As is 
the race, so is the individual, and as is the 
individual, so is the race. Water cannot rise 
above its level. The chain cannot be stronger 
than its weakest link. The race cannot tran- 
scend the individual. The nature of the ances- 
tor and heir is identical. The race persists by 
its strength of life, not its weakness of death. 
Whatever the race has, it must give to the 
individual ; and whatever the individual re- 



TYPE AND INDIVIDUAL IDENTICAL. 37 

ceives, it must give back to the race. The 
race lives by the lives it continues. If the 
individual is perishable, the race must be 
perishable; if the race persists, so must the 
individuals which constitute it. They are in 
the same ship. Indeed, there is no difference 
between them. The type is the individual, 
and the individual is the type. But if there 
be a difference, there must have been a mo- 
ment when one was and the other was not. 
If this were even so, which was first, the type 
or the individual ? If the first man had died 
before there had been another, would not both 
type and individual have died ? Individual 
persons make the race, and not the race indi- 
viduals. As there can be no type or race 
without individuals, so the persistence of one 
must be the persistence of the other. Adam 
was either the race, or only an individual. If 
he was only an individual, then the individual 
originated the race. If the individual originat- 
ed the race, and the race be imperishable, 
then the individual originated something im- 



38 AFTER DEATH— WHAT 1 

perishable. If the individual originated any- 
thing imperishable, would not its first care 
have been to make itself imperishable ? Self- 
persistence was innate in the first man. In 
other words, was not Adam, while he was the 
first and only man, in himself both type and 
individual ? And as such, was he not, in your 
idea, at the same moment both mortal and im- 
mortal — mortal as an individual, and immortal 
as a type ? As these conditions were succes- 
sive, that is, the individual was first and the 
race or type afterwards, or the reverse, Adam 
must have either fallen from what you call 
the immortality of the type to the mortality 
of the individual, or risen from the mortality 
of the individual to the immortality of the 
type. But as it is a law of nature, as you 
contend, for nature to rise and progress, Adam 
could not have dropped from immmortality to 
mortality, but must have risen from mortality to 
immortality by the upward movement of exist- 
ence. If Shakespeares and Miltons are evolved 
from tadpoles and monkeys, as you insist, we 



TYPE AND INDIVIDUAL IDENTICAL. 39 

find the nature of man taking in more and more 
of that which must persist, whether it be of 
type or of the individual. Your Nature-God 
seems like our God, to keep the best, whatever 
may be done with the worst. The persistence 
of the genus includes the persistence of the 
species. Why should the indefinite type per- 
sist and not the definite individual ? " 

" According to your argument," remarked 
the skeptic, "you have as many types as you 
have species or individuals." 

"I do not see that," replied the preacher. 
" The persistence of a principle will illustrate 
the persistence of a being. The polygon has 
many sides, and only one figure. To illustrate 
this, draw an equilateral triangle, and call it 
No. 1." 

" There it is," said the skeptic. 

"Now, draw another equilateral triangle, and 
call it No. 2." 

' < Very well. Now what ? " 

" Have you one figure, or two ? " 

" I have one figure and its copy." 



40 AFTER DEATH— WHAT i 

" Not at all. You have two drawings made 
upon the same principle, entirely irrespective 
of each other, of one and the same figure. No. 
1 is not a pattern to No. 2, nor is No. 2 a copy 
of No. 1, just as one man is not a copy of an- 
other man. They are both originals. That 
equal sides of a triangle make equal angles is 
as necessary and independently true in No. 2 
as in No. 1, and you might keep on drawing 
equilateral triangles forever, and each triangle 
would be an original illustration of the same 
principle, and make the identical figure. In 
other words, each individual triangle would be 
the type, because formed by the same princi- 
ple ; and if the type persists, so does the 
individual." 

" If the triangle be the type, what is the 
individual? " asked the skeptic. 

"The triangle is both type and individual," 
answered the preacher. " There cannot be any 
continuity in the type that is not in the indi- 
vidual. The eternal principle upon which one 
equilateral triangle is formed, is the principle 



TYPE AND INDIVIDUAL IDENTICAL. 41 

upon which every other equilateral triangle is 
formed. That which makes a type in one, 
makes a type wherever that principle is present. 
That which made Adam or the first man a type, 
makes every man a type/' 

"But there is no denying," said the skeptic, 
"that man, the individual, dies, and yet man, 
the type, persists." 

" If the type, under the principle of essential 
continuity, persists here, the individual, under 
the same principle, imparted to or inherited 
from the type, must persist hereafter. In other 
words, the individual does not surrender its 
principle of continuity by change of form or 
place, any more than the worm ceases to live by 
metamorphosing itself into a butterfly. The 
flow of the river is continuous, though some 
part of its channel may be subterranean." 

" I admit," said the skeptic, "that all types 
persist ; but if you use that admission to prove 
the individual immortality of the human soul 
through the persistence of the human type, 
then I insist that the same reasoning proves 



42 AFTER DEATH— WHAT 1 

the individual immortality of the brute soul 
through the persistence of the brute type. If 
inextinguishable existence inheres in one per- 
sistence, it inheres in all persistences." 

" That by no means follows," replied the 
preacher. " Though types do not mix as would 
be the case of animals half-born from rocks, or 
of trees rooted in the backs of animals, and 
though all living things are half way from some- 
thing above and something below them, yet 
things persist according to their nature, one for 
awhile and another forever. Persistence is 
not change. It continues and perfects a type 
through its own era, but it does not lift one 
type out of itself into another, the material into 
the spiritual, the unconscious into the conscious, 
the mortal into the immortal. The spiritual, 
the conscious, and the immortal must be in the 
type at its start, or never. Any way, my logic 
is not invalidated if it prove more than my 
proposition. Let the brute be immortal ! Some 
brutes would seem to be as fit for immortality 
as some men. Types persist. That is admitted. 



TYPE AND INDIVIDUAL IDENTICAL. 43 

But how about the individual ? Is not a chip 
from the block a part of the block ? Is not a 
drop of ink still ink, though not in the inkstand? 
Is not a drop of wine from the goblet still wine, 
though it be only an individual drop? Is not 
the individual whatever the type is? And has 
not each type its own duration of persistence? 
The vegetable type its duration ? The animal 
type its duration ? The conscious, spiritual 
type its duration ? " 

" As you have so magnified the importance 
of the persistency of type, of which I made only 
passing mention," said the skeptic, " let me ask 
what duration do you ascribe to the persistence 
of the several types, especially of what you call 
the conscious, spiritual type ? " 

" As the conscious, spiritual type," said the 
preacher, " is at the summit of things, I suppose 
it will persist as long as things have a summit. 
I can conceive of no reason for a change. But 
any way, that is a question for you to answer. 
As you proposed the doctrine of persistence, it 
is for you to show where persistence ends. 



44 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? 

Matter persists forever. Energy persists for- 
ever; and if we apply Mr. Herbert Spencer's 
test of truth, the inconceivability of the oppo- 
site, we must admit that, as consciousness pos- 
sesses an independent existence of its own, at 
the summit of everything, it, too, must persist 
forever. 1 For my part, I do not know what 
this law of persistence is, which may extend 
from a second through an eternity, only that it 
is. Do you know any more of it ? What is 
this law of life? Who knows ? Do you ? 

" I see things go on continuously, ' the herb 
yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yield- 
ing fruit, whose seed is in itself, after his kind. ' 
I do not know, from any light of science, how 
things began, nor how they continue. I do not 
know what oxygen is, or what electricity is, or 
what force is. Do you ? I do not know what 
matter is, or what mind is. Do you? In short, 
who knows what anything is? Do you? But, 
although science does not inform me what the 

1 Eccles, Popular Science Monthly, July, 1878, p. 356. But- 
ler's Analogy, Chap. I. 



LAW DEFINED. 



law of persistence is, or any other law, my own 
opinion is that all law is will." 

"Whose will?" 

" You ask Schoepenhaur and Tyndal, and I 
will ask David and Paul. One thing is certain, 
laws do not make themselves. If there be any 
such thing as laws, which some of you skeptics 
now doubt, we know, from the unity of the 
economy of the world, that there is but one 
Law-giver. ' ' 

" If you can prove, as a trick of words, that 
the man is the race, and the race is the man," 
said the skeptic, " each man is conscious that 
he is his own individual self, and not the race. 
I know that my mind is my own, and I know 
that it is not yours. Each man's consciousness 
assures him of the ridiculousness of your whole 
argument. ' ' 

"Then you believe in the testimony of con- 
sciousness," said the preacher. 

"I would be a fool if I did not," said the 
skeptic. 

"Then," said the preacher, "I contend that 



46 AFTER DEATH— WHAT 1 

(b.) "The persistence of consciousness proves 
the immortality of the soul.' 7 

" Are you crazy," asked the skeptic, " or are 
you trifling with my common sense? " 

" Neither," answered t^ie preacher. " Com- 
mon sense is so rare that I would not trifle with 
it under any circumstances, more especially 
with you, in this conversation. It is the ground 
upon which I claim to be, and where I should be 
glad to find you. Each one is conscious, as you 
say, that his mind is his own, and continuous. 
Each one has the same reason to believe in the 
individuality and continuous personality of his 
own mind, that he has to believe in its exist- 
ence. And we may as well expect the mind 
itself to perish, as to expect its individuality 
and personal continuance to perish. We know 
that we know ; in other words, we are con- 
scious, and therefore immortal.'' x 

1 "The exercises of the mind arise and vanish, and are each 
separate and distinct from others in their appearance ; but 
the same mind is in and through them all, and holds them all 
in its one consciousness. The thought which was yesterday 
or last year in consciousness, and the conscious thought of 



CONSCIOUSNESS PROVES IMMORTALITY. 47 

" Consciousness persists because, first, it is 
immaterial, uncompounded, and,* therefore, in- 
dissoluble ; and second, because it is at the 
summit of beings, and survives as the fittest. 
Consciousness is either inherent in matter, or it 
is an independent attribute. If it inheres in 
matter, it inheres in each and every atom, or in 
a combination of atoms. If it inheres in a com- 

to-day are both recognized as being in the same self-con- 
sciousness. The self-consciousness has not changed, while 
the exercises have been coming and departing. The mind 
thus remains in its own identity yesterday and onward into 
the future, perpetuating the same mind. Through all devel- 
opment of its faculties, in all states, the mind itself neither 
comes nor goes, but retains its self-sameness through all 
changes. Its phenomenal experience varies in time, but it- 
self perdures through all time." (Hickok, Science of the 
Mind from Consciousness, Chap. I, p. 3.) 

"Consciousness has been very differently apprehended by 
different writers, and certainly not seldom misapprehended. 
Some have considered it as scarcely to be distinguished from 
personal identity; others as a separate faculty for knowing 
the action of all other mental powers ; and others again as 
the complement and connection of all mental exercises, inas- 
much as they are all held in one consciousness. Conscious- 
ness is doubtless ever one in the same person, otherwise some 
actions would be in one consciousness, and some in another, 
and man's life could never be brought into one experience. 
But this does by no means confound consciousness in personal 
identity, for identity continues in and through a great num- 
ber of states of consciousness." (Ibid. 88.) 



48 AFTER DEATH— WHAT ? 

bination of atoms, then it must inhere in each 
atom ; for, as^nothing can communicate what 
it has not, each atom must have inherently in 
itself the consciousness which it communicates 
to a combination of atoms. As consciousness is 
personality, if each atom is conscious, each man 
is not one person, but as many persons as there 
are atoms in his body. But as pur bodies are 
no two seconds the same, if each atom is con- 
scious, and, therefore, a person, we are not only 
a congress, but an endless procession of persons, 
which is inconceivable. The nature of every 
cause must include its effects ; but, as we can- 
not conceive of anything being and not being 
at the same moment, so the nature of uncon- 
sciousness cannot include consciousness, and 
unconsciousness cannot, therefore, be the cause 
of consciousness as an effect. If consciousness 
be indivisible, it cannot be an inherent energy 
in divisible matter. 

" Consciousness can become extinct in only 
one of three ways : either, first, by dissolution, 
which is impossible, as consciousness is a single, 



IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 49 

not a compound substance, and cannot be dis- 
solved ; or, second, by privation of a part of its 
essence ; but as consciousness has no parts, it 
can be deprived of none ; or, third, by anni- 
hilation ; but this could only be by its own act, 
which is not supposable, unless by the external 
act of God, whose existence you deny." 

"But," said the skeptic, "it can be anni- 
hilated by the God whose existence you preach- 
ers admit." 

" Our God says that our spirits shall return to 
Him who gave them. Bat let us keep to the 
skeptical line of argument, for it is this I wish 
to meet, 

" As a principle of unity, the soul is indis- 
cerptible and indestructible ; as a principle of. 
motion, it is incapable of rest ; as a vital prin- 
ciple, it is incapable of annihilation ; as a self- 
conscious principle, it is incapable of oblivion. " 1 

" Why is personal consciousness therefore im- 
mortal, as you remarked a moment since ? " 
asked the skeptic. 

1 Heard's Tripartite Nature of Man, p. 3. 
3 



50 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? 

"The immortality of the soul," replied the 
preacher, " is not impossible from any connec- 
tion with matter, for it is not matter. As nature 
can make no leaps, unconscious matter could 
never have become conscious matter. That 
matter should think is unthinkable. The body 
changes constantly, but never the consciousness. 
Each persists or not by its own laws. Herbert 
Spencer says that there is no conceivable kind 
of consciousness which does not imply continued 
existence as its datum. 1 Nature confines life in 
unconsciousness below. Supernature enlarges 
it in consciousness above." 

"Or rather," remarked the skeptic, "first 
prove that the soul or consciousness of man is 
anything but an effect, and anything more to 
the body than music is to the instrument ; that 
it is a reality and not a mere name." 

1 First Prin., chap. VI, sec. 62. After the text was written, 
the Popular Science Monthly for July, 1878, brought me a most 
admirable article, by R. G. Eccles, Esq., on the " Radical 
Fallacy of Materialism," wherein he says, at the conclusion 
of a line of most convincing argument : "If we declare mat- 
ter and energy to be eternal, then we must declare the same 
of consciousness." p. 360. 



CONSCIOUSNESS IMMORTAL. 51 

"Let us not," replied the preacher, " plunge 
into the old discussion of the school-men, as to 
the distinction between nominalism and real- 
ism. If consciousness or the soul itself be an 
effect, then it persists ; for all effects not only 
succeed, but survive their causes. The soul or 
mind is something, or it is nothing. If it be 
nothing, then as nothing, it cannot be destroyed. 
If it can be destroyed, then it must be some- 
thing, for destruction implies something to be 
destroyed. Bat if it be something, it cannot 
be destroyed ; for while nature changes all 
things that are changeable, she destroys noth- 
ing that she values as anything. ,, 

"Nature," said the skeptic, "may preserve 
the soul as a part of the general force of the 
universe, and yet destroy its consciousness, and 
so its personality ; in other words, reabsorb it, 
as the Buddhists belie ve." 

" Then she destroys the soul itself," replied 
the preacher ; " for the soul to be a soul must 
retain its individual and conscious personality. 
But in any view you may take, immortality is 



52 AFTER DEATH— WHAT 1 

sure. We see the proof of it in this, among 
other considerations : Consciousness makes a 
person and distinguishes man in the scale of 
being, whether he be an original type or a de- 
rived individual; whether he be the fountain or 
the issuing stream. If man derives this being, 
it must be from some conscious cause. If he 
originates his own consciousness, he creates it as 
a God, and he can continuously transmit it as 
a God. In his consciousness, man shows that 
he is either descended by creation from some 
conscious God, or that, in consciousness, he is 
himself a God to his conscious descendants. 
Therefore, whether he begins in a God as a 
source of conscious being, or a God begins in 
him as a source of conscious being, he is immor- 
tal, for nothing divine ever dies/' 

"What fallacies, I might say sophistries," 
remarked the skeptic. 

" Why so ? " inquired the other. 

"Do you not apply physical principles to 
psychological conditions ? " asked the skeptic. 

" Is the logic of matter not the same as the 
logic of mind ? " 



THE ORIGIN OF THINGS. 53 

"We know nothing about the mind," an- 
swered the skeptic. 

" Do you know anything more about mat- 
ter ? " replied the preacher. 1 

1 "Six hundred years before Christ, Thales taught that all 
things sprung from water ; Anaximines was as certain that 
all things were made out of air ; Pythagoras held to the inex- 
plicable theory of numbers as the source of all matter ; 
Xenophanes believed and insisted that all things were but 
parts of one Pleroma or Being ; Parmenides said that all 
things came from one great thought ; Zeno held to a panthe- 
istic Godhead ; Empedocles was certain that four elements 
originated all things ; Democritus conceived the idea that all 
nature came from eternal atoms ; Heroclitus had a theory of 
lire and motion ; Anaxagoras held the truth of a world-form- 
ing intelligence. What beautiful confusions ! 

"If science be an indisputable authority, its progressive 
utterances must be uniform and universal. But this is notori- 
ously not the case. Buckle says that moral truth is unchange- 
able, but that of the intellect not so. This is fortunate for 
moral truth and the moral certainty of the world, but most 
unfortunate for the claim of mere intellectual progress to 
direct conduct and the world. History gives us but little 
certainty as to how science will change its conclusions. First, 
it may be from error to error, as from the erroneous theory of 
Hipparchus to the no less errors of Ptolemy ; second, it may 
be from error to truth, as from the errors of the Pagan Ptolemy 
to the divine truth of the Christian Copernicus ; third, it may 
be from truth to error, as from the teachings of Copernicus to 
those of his successor and pupil, Tycho Brahe ; fourth, it may 
be from one divine truth to another divine truth , as from the 
teachings of Copernicus to those of Kewton. Varro says 
three hundred different philosophers held as many different 
opinions concerning the Deity, and two hundred and eighty 



54 AFTER DEATH— WHAT ? 

44 You have," said the skeptic, "the most 
unfair way of putting things. " 

"Do the skeptics," inquired the preacher, 
" put things in any fairer way ? Like the pagan 
priests, who have ceased to believe what they 
preached, no two speculative scientists, who 
know how they have entertained the intelli- 
gence of the age with conjectured facts and 
radical inferences, can look each other in the 
face without laughing. They use special and 
sounding words, as if these represented estab- 
lished truth instead of novel theories, and they 
capture the credulity of the ignorant by the 
confidence of their assumptions. They do a 
very big business on exceedingly small capital. 
They talk of atoms, molecules, conservation of 
force, and protoplasms, as if they were the 
most certain of things. Except as to pure and 
applied mathematics, and the science of the 
practical arts, what one of your theories is estab- 
lished ? From the confident air with which 
you advance them, the unlearned think them 

of these held divers opinions concerning the supreme good 
or ground of morality." 



ARROGANCE OF SCIENCE. 55 

all 'to be true, as you state them. You destroy 
the faith of the young, and offer nothing to the 
old but the grinning skeleton of knowledge. 
You use words as if they were proofs and argu- 
ments. 1 

" You sneer at the scientific learning of the 
clergy, as if the great secrets of nature lay hid 
in the crucible and retort of the materialists 
alone, or would reveal themselves only to the 
scalpel of you skeptics. The pages of nature 
are open alike to all, and all educated men are 
men of science. The black arts of the chem- 
ists no longer alarm. There is no hierarchy to 
the knowledge of nature. You know what 
others know, and no more. Your opinions re- 
specting physical phenomena are of no more 
value than those of any other diligent student, 
clerical or lay. You sneer with a contemptu- 
ous intolerance at all who do not concur in your 
assertions to-day, and yet to-morrow you are 
made to swallow your own pulverized theories. 

1 Prof. Emil Du Bois Raymond says : "Modern natural sci- 
ence, parodoxical as the statement is, owes its origin to Chris- 
tianity." Popular Science Monthly, July, 1878. 



56 AFTER DEATH— WHAT ? 

A scientific bigot is arrogant with a special 
knowledge and a general ignorance. Your own 
Vinchow says: 'Of all kinds of dogmatism, the 
materialistic is the most dangerous, because it 
denies its own dogmatism, and appears in the 
garb of science ; because it professes to rest on 
fact, when it is but speculation; and because it 
attempts to annex territories to natural science, 
before they have been fairly conquered.' "* 

" I will not resent the discourtesy of these 
remarks," said the skeptic. " You clergy are 
impatient of contradiction, and tremble lest the 
light of science should dissipate the darkness of 
religious credulity. The priest sees his altar 
deserted and himself without followers. Theo- 
logical studies narrow the mind and spoil the 
temper." 

" If we theologians who study most the ex- 
istence of an infinite God be narrow-minded, 
what must be the narrow-mindedness of you 
scientists who study only the existence of a 
finite and imaginary atom ? 

"Excuse me, if I spoke too earnestly, and 

1 Nature, Nov. 1874. 



NATURE ADVANCES. 57 

let us keep in good humor with each other, for 
neither of us know any too much." 

"That's true," admitted the skeptic, good- 
naturedly. 

i 

u But," said the preacher, u do not fancy 
that we are on the same level ; for while we 
believe much, there is so much that you do not 
know. Whatever our speculative errors may 
be, they most certainly mould character, im- 
prove institutions, and help conduct ; but your 
speculative errors break down all hope, and 
build up nothing but despair. Taking your 
theories at what you claim for them, let me 
ask you, Does nature change by receding or 
advancing ? Does she ever tear down any- 
thing except to build up something better ? 
When she decomposes vegetable life, is it not 
to build up animal life ? If our consciousness 
be destroyed, must it not be for some condition 
above consciousness ? What do you know of 
the origin of life ? of organization ? of the con- 
nection between matter and mind ? What you 
do know is limited, but what you do not know 

3* 



58 AFTER DEATH— WHAT ? 

is unlimited. 1 Does matter mentalize itself, or 
mind materialize itself ? You evolutionists 
have never answered the question whether the 
egg preceded and was adapted to the chicken, 
or the chicken to the egg ; whether the male 
was made before and for the female, or the 
female before and for the male; whether the 
honey was made for the bee or the bee for the 
honey. The Unknown is vast indeed ! Do 
not all things advance ? " 

" Advance would seem to be," admitted the 
skej)tic, " in accordance with a law of nature 
in the past, certainly." 

" Then you must prove that it has been 
repealed as to the future." 

" But," replied the skeptic, "if nature tears 
down the vegetables on one plane to build up 
the animals on a higher plane, why should not 
the brute develope into something above itself ? 
If man can become an angel, why not the brute 

iSee Dr. Montgomery's "Monera, or the Problem of Life," 
Pop. Science Monthly, August, 1878; Supplement Pop. S. M., 
May, 1878, Virchow, 12, 73 ; also, July number, p. 334; Tyn- 
dall, Address, Norwich, 1868. 



ARE BRUTES IMMORTAL? 59 

become a man ? If. as according to the analog}^ 
of nature, conscious man is to be lifted into 
some power above consciousness, ought not the 
unconscious brute to be lifted above itself into 
consciousness ? I insist, that if development is 
to be expected in men, so it ought to be in 
brutes/' 

u We can look below us and see that no 
brute ever does become a man ; but we cannot 
look above us in the same way to see what a 
man may expect to become," replied the 
preacher. " Immortality is necessarily to be 
expected from nature in either man or brutes, 
or both, unless she can be stupid enough to stop 
in sight of what would glorify her most. If 
she can produce life for awhile in man and 
brute, why not life forever ? Has not nature 
as much reason to go on as she had to begin ? 
And since beginning, has she not in fact steadily 
advanced, and held every gain ? As to think- 
ing animals, no intelligence short of conscious- 
ness is considered a gain." 

" Are not brutes conscious ? " 



60 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? 

"We have no knowledge that they are. 
Whatever mind the brutes may have, so far as 
we now know, seems limited to their animal 
wants. It is directive, not reflective. 1 But 
man has mind for far more. Brute mind is 
imperishable, only as an impersonal, uncon- 
scious mode of force, in the same grade of 
force it is now ; but lacking consciousness, it 
is perishable as mind. The mind-force of man 
persists in its consciousness. It is conscious- 
ness which lifts mind from a mode or manifes- 
tation of force into force itself. Conscious 
mind is force." 

" In distinguishing between individuality 
and personality, do you not make a distinction 
without a difference ? " 

"Not at all. Consciousness is the grand 
difference between individuality and person- 
ality, and is a new order of existence. Nature 
preserves its best things, and these only. If it 
preserves not consciousness, what else would it 
preserve ? 

1 Gould's Origin of Religious Ideas, p. 51. 



BRUTES NOT PERSONS. 61 

" When brutes die, the intelligent but uncon- 
scious force that was individualized in them for 
a time obeys the law 7 of all unconscious, unper- 
sonalized force, and losing whatever individ- 
uality it may have exhibited when it has 
performed any special work, is correlated back 
into something else, or reabsorbed : as, after 
electricity has been captured and made to fire 
guns, ring bells, explode mines, and carry 
messages across vast oceans and broad conti- 
nents, it drops its temporary mode of individu- 
ality, and, lapsing back like a wave of the sea, 
becomes again an undistinguishable part of 
electricity elsewhere, oris correlated into heat. 
Individuality was no part of its nature, but only 
an impersonal, unconscious manifestation of it. 
So the individualized mind of the brute, not 
having gained consciousness, or enough to lift 
it into the higher order of personalized force, 
drops its individuality when its animal work is 
done, as a tree or an oyster drops its individu- 
ality; and being only unconscious force, is con- 
servated, like any other unconscious force, by 



62 AFTER DEATH— WHAT ? 

correlation or reabsorption. But the person- 
ality of man, including the individuality com- 
mon to the brute, and also a consciousness 
which is peculiar to man, is a vast flight 
upward; and manifests, if it does not originate, 
as before said, a new order of force in which 
individuality, now lifted into personality, per- 
sists. Consciousness, or life, on nature's highest 
terrace, is a gain to be conservated, if any is to 
be conservated. To individuality there has 
been superadded, in conscious intelligence, 
moral power and spiritual responsibility, all 
that is meant by personality. Nature advances 
as much in moving from unconsciousness to 
consciousness, as she does when the animal 
kingdom rises above the vegetable kingdom. 
Is there a greater difference between these 
kingdoms than there is between conscious man 
thinking about his thought, and the unconscious 
brute thinking only about his mate and his 
food ? If the law of progress be admitted, then 
immortality begins where consciousness be- 
gins, and ends where it ends. Disembodied 



INDIVIDUALITY IS NOT PERSONALITY. 63 

life is not new in the nature of things, if mind 
preceded matter. Conscious mind is either a 
mode of matter, or it is above matter. If 
above, it can survive in the future, as in the 
past, the absence of that which is beneath it. 
If mind be a mode of matter, it must be a su- 
preme mode, conscious, individual, and per- 
sonal ; and as such, it must exist forever, 
because no matter perishes. If, in other words, 
matter becomes a person, then as personalized 
matter it is perishable. If matter becomes 
conscious, then it must exist as conscious 
matter. " 

" I would like to get your idea of the dis- 
tinction between individuality and personality, 
already alluded to, more clearly," remarked 
the skeptic. 

"Then," said the preacher, " every person 
is an individual, but every individual is not a 
person. We cannot transcend our personal- 
ity. A person is an individual that is con- 
scious of his individuality — a thinker conscious 
of his thought — one who knows that he knows. 



64 AFTER DEATH^-WHAT I 

A stone or a piece of metal is an individual 
mass or lump which may be separated into 
parts, each of which shall continue to have 
the same qualities as the whole. That which 
cannot be parted into several things of the 
same nature is an individual whole ; as, for 
instance, a seed, a plant or an animal, when 
separated into parts, loses its identity or indi- 
viduality, which is not retained by any of its 
parts. We refuse personality to a stone or a 
metal, because these things exist for others 
and not for themselves. We refuse it also to 
a mere animal, because, though it may have 
individuality, it is not conscious of its individu- 
ality. We ascribe personality to man because 
that which he is, he is for himself, and has 
consciousness of it. Consciousness, or the abil- 
ity to study our own minds, pre-eminently dis- 
tinguishes man from the brute — the person 
from the individual. It is the dividing line 
between imperishable personality and perisha- 
ble individuality. Until personality is attained, 
there is no such individuality as needs or does 



UNCONSCIOUS INDIVIDUALITY DIES. 65 

persist. Though consciousness is not in itself a 
force, yet, when force becomes conscious, con- 
sciousness persists with the persistence of the 
force that manifests it." 

" Men die !" continued the skeptic. 

"Yes," answered the preacher, " the indi- 
vidual or unconscious animal part dies, but not 
the conscious or personal part." 

" Why does the unconscious die and not the 
conscious ? " 

"Because," replied the preacher, "the ani- 
mal begets the animal and it dies; God gives 
the conscious part from himself, and it lives on. 
We can conceive of no consciousness that does 
not continue. 1 To resolve personal conscious- 
ness back into impersonal consciousness is not 
to correlate or transform, but to destroy it, and 
nature destroys nothing." 

"Does not nature destroy the individuality 
of the brute at its death ? " inquired the skep- 
tic. 

" She drops it," replied the preacher, " but 

1 Herbert Spencer's Opinion, ante, p. 12. 



66 AFTER DEATH— WHAT J 

she seems not to consider the obliteration of 
any individuality short of conscious individu- 
ality, rising into personality, as a destruction or 
loss. Consciousness is at the summit of all 
things, and it is consciousness that makes indi- 
viduality a type, and so a gain. Personality is 
equal to a type, but if personal consciousness 
does not persist, then it is a total loss, and 
nature works in vain, preserving her lower, 
impersonal types, and annihilating her highest 
personal, conscious individuals. Such an exhi- 
bition of power, such vacillating weakness of 
purpose, and such permission of loss, if not 
wanton destruction, would proclaim nature to 
be an idiot and a suicide. She may convert 
impersonal and unconscious force, and exalt 
conscious force, but not destroy it. The ele- 
ments of everything that dies can be and are 
used over again, such as the carbon and other 
elements in the animal body; but that which 
cannot be used over again does not die. The 
consciousness of one cannot be used again in 
the consciousness of another, and unless each 



UNCONSCIOUS INDIVIDUALITY DIES. 67 

man's consciousness persists under all changes, 
then consciousness, which is the most exalted 
of facts, must perish altogether. Does nature 
in anything else so destroy it's best work ? It 
is in consciousness that man is in the likeness 
of God, or whatever is supreme above him. 
In the pyramid of cannon balls all serve and 
glorify the one at the top; as in the universe, 
consciousness looks down upon all unconscious 
forms below it. Is it in the way of nature that 
the top alone shall perish, and all below it per- 
sist?" 

" Brutes are not immortal, because, while 
they have individuality they have not con- 
sciousness, or anything that nature cares to 
preserve, except their material elements. Hav- 
ing no conscious personality, they must forever 
remain in the class of impersonal things, and be 
correlated or transmitted from one impersonal 
thing to another. Below personal individuality, 
no individuality persists." 

"Nothing persists," said the skeptic, "but 
type, matter, and force." 



68 AFTER DEATH— WHAT 1 

" Very well, then," continued the preacher, 
"as we have considered the immortality of 
man from the persistence of type, the conti- 
nuity of consciousness, and not pausing now to 
consider how far the imperishableness of matter 
might prove the imperishableness of the soul, 
I will show that : 

(<?.) The persistence or conservation of force 
proves the immortality of the soul. 

"I open and shut my hand. What does 
that?" 

"Mind," answered the skeptic. 

" Is that mind which opens and shuts the 
muscles of the hand the same thing as the 
muscles ? " 

"No," said the scientist, with a shrug; "I 
suppose it might be called a force." 

"What is force?" 

" Anything that moves matter." 

"Then if I understand you, mind is force, 
because it moves matter ? " 

"Yes." 



SOUL IMMORTAL AS A FORCE. 69 

" Again : I hold the bulb of this thermome- 
ter in my hand, and the mercury rises. What 
makes it rise ? " asked the preacher. 

u The heat of your body," was the answer. 

" Is the heat of my body a force, too," asked 
the preacher. 

u Yes/' was the reply. 

"What is the difference," asked the 
preacher, " between the mind-force, which 
opens and shuts my hand, and the heat or 
matter-force, which makes the mercury rise in 
the thermometer?" 

" Mind-force thinks and matter-force does 
not," answered the skeptic. 

" What do you mean," said the skeptic, " by 
mind-force ? " 

"You scientists," replied the preacher, 
" say that whatever moves matter is a force. 
I call mind a force because it moves matter, 
and whatever you predicate of force you can 
predicate of mind." 

" Hold on a moment," interrupted the skep- 
tic. " Prove to me that mind moves matter." 



70 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? 

"By what power," asked the preacher, "do 
you crook your finger ? " 

"By the power of my will." 

"Is not the will, then, a force ? " 

"No. It is only the manifestation of a 
force." 

"Is not the will the force," asked the 
preacher, " and the crooking of the finger the 
manifestation ? If the will is not a force in 
itself, but only a manifestation, of what force 
is it a manifestation ? Of the mind ? " 

"No," replied the skeptic. "The mind 
itself, like all else, is only the manifestation of 
what Herbert Spencer calls Absolute Force, 
The Unknown Cause, The Unconditioned 
Reality." 

"Then," replied the preacher, "the act of 
crooking your finger is the manifestation of 
your will as a sort of force, and your will the 
manifestation of your mind as a sort of force 
behind the will, and your mind the manifesta- 
tion of the absolute force. In other words, the 
act of crooking your finger is the manifestation 



SOUL IMMORTAL AS A FORCE. 71 

of a manifestation of a manifestation of the ab- 
solute force or the unknown cause. Clear, is it 
not ? Either change your definition of force, 
or admit, fairly and squarely, that mind is a 
force; and if a force, as imperishable as all other 
force. Your confusion is, in making all force 
only manifestations of the one absolute force; 
which squints at Pantheism. It seems clear 
that force, and its manifestations, are two 
things. For instance, heat or will-power moves 
a body. Now, it is evident that the motion 
is the manifestation, and heat, or the will, is 
the force. In this sense, Herbert Spencer is 
right; the motion or manifestation disappears, 
while the force behind it persists.' ' 

u Still," asked the skeptic, " do you not in 
the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, as 
conservated mind-force, prove too much ? " 

"How so?" 

"Do you not prove the immortality of the 
souls of brutes ? They think, their minds 
move matter, and are therefore a force; if a 
force, their minds must be imperishable, if for 
that reason human minds are." 



72 AFTER DEATH— WHAT ? 

" I should not regret it if they were, but the 
immortality of brute-minds would not disprove 
the immortality of human minds. The soul of 
man has a personal immortality in having con- 
sciousness, for the want of which the mind of 
the brute is mortal/' 

" Prove that." 

" I think, and I think about my thought; in 
other words, I am conscious." 

"Yes." 

" Does the brute think about its thought ? 
Is it conscious ? " 

" Of course not — or, at least, we have no 
evidence that it is." 

"Then conscious mind-force belongs exclu- 
sively to man, making him a person ; and 
unconscious mind-force belongs exclusively to 
brutes, leaving them in the class of thinking 
but unconscious things." 

"Yes." 

" We have seen that each man has in himself 
two orders of force: a conscious, personalizing, 
regulative mind-force, as seen in his will, elevat- 



BRUTE SOULS IMPERSONAL. 73 

ing him into a person; and an unconscious, 
impersonal, regulated matter-force, as seen in 
the heat of his material body, which he has in 
common with mere things. The brute has the 
same two orders of force, but its mind-force is 
as unconscious as its matter-force. Its intelli- 
gence is called instinct, and only directive, not 
reflective, and is limited, unconscious, imper- 
sonal, and without moral responsibility." 

" Admitted." 

" I asked you before, whence did force come, 
and whither did it go ? " 

" And I answered that force was and is, and 
that force ever will be." 

" You admitted that force was, therefore, 
imperishable." 

"Yes." 

" Then why not the mind of man ? " 

" It is imperishable, and so, I still contend, 
is the mind of the brute ; but at death all 
mind, whether of man or of the brute, be- 
comes as impersonal and unconscious as gravi- 
tation." 

4 



74 AFTER DEATH— WHAT J 

" Not quite so fast, if you please. How do 
you know that you have a mind at all ? " 

" I am conscious of it." 

"You admitted/' said the preacher, "that 
the brute was not conscious of his mind." 

"Yes." 

" Here, then, there is at once a wide and 
unbridged gulf between man and the brute." 

"If," said the skeptic, "mind as a force 
immortalizes man as a conscious person, why 
should it not immortalize a mere brute as an 
unconscious individual ? Force is force." 

" But all force is not the same force. To 
our observation there are two orders: first, a 
mind-force, underived and supreme in the 
Unoriginated Power — personal, intelligent, con- 
scious, and dominating all below it; and second, 
matter-force, such as heat and gravitation, 
impersonal, unconscious, unintelligent and sec- 
ondary to all force above it. You scientists 
say now that there is but one force in all the 
universe, conscious in mind and unconscious in 
matter. Though you do not prove this unity 



IMPERSONAL FORCE REABSORBED. 75 

of force, yet, admitting it to be so as the last 
conclusion of science and for the sake of the 
argument, even then the unconscious, such as 
heat and electricity, must be a mode of the 
conscious, having its basis, as Herbert Spencer 
says, in Absolute Being, and not the conscious 
its basis in the unconscious. Even if all force 
is but eternal power in action, conscious in 
mind, unconscious in matter, it must ever go 
forward, but never backward. So that if mat- 
ter-force cannot be annihilated, neither, a for- 
tiori^ can mind-force, of which matter-force is 
the unconscious, impersonal mode. To make 
the whole reasoning plain beyond a doubt, 
challenging the detection of a fallacy, I will 
state it in the argument of two syllogisms, 
which you must admit or deny: 

" Whatever moves matter is a force. Mind 
moves matter; therefore mind is a force." 

The skeptic was silent. 

The preacher continued: "All force is imper- 
ishable. The mind is a force; therefore all 
mind is imperishable." 



76 AFTER DEATH— WHAT 1 

" Ah ! " interposed the skeptic, "I deny the 
major premise of this last syllogism; you must 
prove that all force is imperishable." 

"How do you prove that any force is imper- 
ishable? " replied the preacher. 

" I prove the imperishableness of any and of 
all force," replied the skeptic, "by the admit- 
ted fact that its quantity is fixed ; that is, that 
force can be neither increased nor diminished, 
neither created nor destroyed. Do you not be- 
lieve this ? " 

" I do not admit conservation of force to be 
the fact, in your terms," replied the preacher, 
" but only that such is the theory by which 
you scientists try to account for phenomena 
that can, as yet, be accounted for as well in no 
other way." 

"You certainly do not tell me," exclaimed 
the skeptic, "that you, with your learning, do 
not accept the doctrine of the conservation and 
correlation of force ? " 

" I accept it as much as Herbert Spencer 
accepts it. 



WHAT IS CONSERVATION OF FORCE ? 77 

'Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.' 

Those who know the most say the least. Her- 
bert Spencer says 1 'the persistence of force is 
an ultimate truth of which no inductive proof 
is possible.' Youmans says ' it is not without 
its difficulties, which time alone must be trusted 
to remove.' 2 Grove, Faraday, Stewart, Le- 
Conte and Bain assume, rather than attempt to 
prove, the doctrine of the conservation of force. 
Do you believe these doctrines yourself ? I 
can see such correlation as heat into elec- 
tricity, and of electricity into heat ; but I do 
not see gravitation correllated or transferred 
into any other manifestation of force, or of any 
other force into gravitation. Besides, if force 
can be and is exhaustively correllated back- 
wards and forwards, how can your theory of 
evolution be true, that everything progresses 
forever ? The constancy or inconstancy in the 
quantity of force depends upon whether its 
source is personal or impersonal, and this ques- 

1 First Principles, Chap. VI, §59. 

2 Introduction to Cor. and Con. of Forces, xiv. 



78 AFTER DEATH— WHAT ? 

tion of source must be first settled. The mani- 
festation of impersonal force, that is, force 
manifested in things as well as persons — such as 
the blind force of heat, electricity, or gravita- 
tion — is as an ocean of force lifted and broken 
at times into individual waves that lapse and 
subside into the infinite fullness. Personal or 
will force, originating in the mind of an Infinite 
Person, is deposited and perpetually correllated 
in the wills of finite, conscious persons. If a 
Person did not create force, force has certainly 
created not only a person, but multitudes of 
persons, for man is here. If there be no God, 
and unintelligent, eternal Force created every- 
thing, then it was indeed a miraculous leap for 
the conscious force manifested in every mans 
will to come up out of what you call uncon- 
scious force lurking only in matter. If uncon- 
scious force originated everything, which one 
of its forces did the work ? Did unconscious 
gravitation create everything ? Did uncon- 
scious electricity create everything ? Did un- 
conscious chemical affinity create everything ? 



FORCE INFINITE IN QUANTITY. 79 

" Do you deny that the quantity of force in 
the universe, is fixed ? " inquired the skeptic. 

" Why should it be fixed, and who is to fix 
it ? " replied the preacher. 

" Excuse me, if I insist upon a direct answer/' 

"Then," said the preacher, "I admit that 
the quantity of force is fixed; but it is infinite." 

" Nonsense ! " exclaimed the skeptic. 

"It is more logical, and not so difficult," re- 
plied the preacher, to suppose that your creative 
nature, in originating and fixing the quantity of 
force would have provided an infinite quantity, 
than to suppose that she would have experi- 
mented upon the possible insufficiency of a 
finite quantity." 

" How could there be any ' possible insuffic- 
iency ' of force, even if the quantity were 
finite ? " asked the skeptic, in a puzzled tone. 

" If nature had any plan to which she invari- 
ably worked, we might suppose that she would 
have known exactly how much and what* kind 
of force she would need, and might, with good 
reason, have fixed its quantity in finite limits ; 



80 AFTER DEATH— WHAT/ 

but as you, Buckner, Vogt, and Moleschott, 
deny that there is design or plan in nature, she 
could not, therefore, know how much force 
she might need in her blind work, and might 
well be expected to fix enough once for all, and 
make it infinite. Anyway, nature, in the pro- 
digality of her works, seems to be quite confi- 
dent of having enough stufl' to keep up, and 
even extend, her phenomena. The quantity of 
force must be infinite or self-limited ; for you 
deny any God to limit it. But if you say that 
it is not infinite, then you must prove definitely 
how much less it is; because if it be not infi- 
nite it may be zero, and vanish entirely. I ad- 
mit that force is in the universe. Those who 
assert a given quantity must define and prove 
the quantity. The fact is, my unbelieving 
friend, neither you nor any one else knows 
much about this thing you call force. The def- 
inition of force I have used is about as good 
as any, if not the best ; but keep in mind that 
I argue this question from your exclusive stand- 
point of science, not from mine, of both science 



BASIS OF FORCE. 81 

and revelation. " Bat to return to the source 
of force : to what source do you attribute it ? " 

" Of course," answered the skeptic, "to an 
impersonal one." 

"Then you differ from Spencer and Wallace, 
on this point. Herbert Spencer says : c The ax- 
iomatic truths of physical science unavoidably 
postulate Absolute Being as their common basis. 
We cannot construct a theory of internal phe- 
nomena without postulating Absolute Being ; 
and unless we postulate Absolute Being, or Be- 
ing which persists, we cannot construct a theory 
of external phenomena. Thus there is even a 
more profound agreement between Religion and 
Science than was before shown.' * 

"Wallace, on Natural Selection, says: 'If, 
therefore, we have traced one force, however 
minute, to an origin in our own Will, while we 
have no knowledge of any other primary cause 
of force, it does not seem an improbable con- 
clusion that all force may be wiU-iorce; and 
thus, that the whole universe is not merely de- 

1 First Principles, Chap. IX, § 60. 
4* 



82 AFTER DEATH— WHAT ? 

pendent on, but actually is, the Will of higher 
intelligences, or of one Supreme Intelligence.' 1 

" So far as these authorities can settle it, force 
has its basis in Absolute Being. If this be so, 
the quantity of force is not necessarily fixed, 
but may vary with the decisions of His omnific 
will, and so transcend the domain and methods 
of science." 

"■I respectfully differ," in this matter, said 
the skeptic, "from both of these eminent phil- 
osophers. As you say, to admit that force has 
its basis in the will, is necessarily to admit that 
its quantity may possibly be inconstant, and 
its investigation altogether outside of scientific 
methods." 

" What then," inquired the preacher, " is 
the source of force, and how do you account for 
what you see around us ? " 

" I cannot account for anything. Things are 
here, and that is all we know about them," 
was the reply. 

1 Natural Selection, p. 368. See Monera, August No. Popu- 
lar Science Monthly, 457. 



EVIDENCE OF DESIGN. 83 

"For what end were they designed?" 
asked the preacher. 

" For no design," was the answer. " Things 
are just as they are, and we should not have 
found them less full of design had they been 
different. The forces act necessarily blindly." 

" Of course, if you know nothing, you can 
say nothing as to the origin of things; but how 
do they act?" 

" Their activity is from an immanent, neces- 
sary instinct." 

"I suppose," remarked the preacher, " that, 
as Biichner says, I ought to understand what 
it means, but I do not. What does it mean ? " 

"If we have time, I will come back to this 
question with pleasure," said the skeptic. 

"Very well," replied the preacher. "Is 
this instinct intelligent, conscious, and eternal ? 
Explain to me this Impersonal Nature that is 
to your system what a Personal God is to 
mine." 

"Then," said the skeptic, "let us suppose 
that, originally, there was a given quantity of 



84 AFTER DEATH— WHAT 1 

force as raw material — one mass — blind, imper- 
sonal, unconscious, incoherent, never to be 
increased or diminished; and under what law, 
as we study the nature of Nature, would it be 
seen instantly to act ? Necessarily, under the 
law of self- variation, first into minerals, then 
into vegetables, then into animals, and finally, 
as we see the fact to be, into conscious person- 
ality. Nothing keeps still. Like a stick stood 
for a second on end, but must fall, everything 
is in unstable equilibrium. Herbert Spencer, 
having announced that the integration of mat- 
ter and the dissipation of motion was the law 
of evolution, following Von Baer in this one 
thought, proclaimed that the doctrine of the 

INSTABILITY OF THE HOMOGENEOUS IS THE FIRST 

subordinate law of evolution. All matter is 
restless, and in a state of perpetual motion. 
Absolutely nothing is at rest; atoms, molecules, 
masses, society, nations — everything is unsta- 
ble. Conceive that to be a law, and we catch 
an idea how phenomena arose. From the 
result, that the muliplication of effects is the 



THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. 85 

second subordinate law of evolution, every- 
thing moves, and therefore, everything changes. 
In other words, all sameness tends to variety. 
In the Spencerian phrase, the homogeneous 
becomes the heterogeneous. Nature abhors 
monotony, sameness, universal centripetalism. 
The snn is one, but its beams are many. A 
ray of light again is itself dissolved by every- 
thing on which it falls. The crocus consumes 
its red and blue, and rejects its yellow. The 
leaf consumes its red, and rejects its blue and 
yellow after mixing them into green. The 
geranium will distribute on one of its leaves, 
as on the palette of the artist, every scale and 
tone, and every imaginable hue and tint of 
color. Stones aud woods and fruits paint them- 
selves unlike; and on sky and sea and earth, as 
on the proscenium of the universe, the pencil 
of light varies every line, and glorifies all with 
a perpetual newness." 

" You interest me very much ! " 

"So, too," continued the scientist, "in a 
mass of assimilating food, one element betakes 



86 AFTER DEATH— WHAT 1 

itself to the bones, another to the tissues, and 
another to the nerves. In the mind, one power 
is in thought, another in feeling, and another 
in action. In motion, one seeks the center, 
and another flies oft* from the center. In leaf- 
age, how opposed is the unfolding ! Groups 
balance groups, and mass balances mass; and 
from the one system of roots, and the one 
trunk, how unity expands itself into variety; 
and the homogeneous becomes the heterogene- 
ous!" 

" You might say that this necessary instinct 
is a creative instinct," interrupted the preacher. 

"But this is not all," continued the other. 
" We are now prepared to announce that 

SEGREGATION IS THE THIRD SUBORDINATE LAW 

of evolution. In other words : All unity tends 
to plurality. The one makes itself many. At- 
traction and repulsion are universal antitheses. 
Individuality is omnipresent phenomena. Suc- 
cession is difference. There are no two things 
alike in all the universe — no two atoms, no two 
sounds, no two colors, no two lines or forms 



THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. ■ 87 

come from the same mould. Xature is a crea- 
tor, not a mechanic. Though nature, with all 
her originality, may seem to imitate her own 
works, she is too affluent absolutely to repeat 
them. Though nature has but one force, she 
behaves as if she had several, so anxious is she 
to divide herself. For a long time scientists 
thought and talked of heat, electricity, gravi- 
tation, and chemical affinity as different -forces. 
But whether nature really divides up the 
totality of force in this way or not, she never 
intermits her movement from oneness to unity, 
from sameness to variety; grading every line, 
form, sound, and color in the universe. From 
the mass she advanced to different worlds; then 
into ascending kingdoms of minerals; then to 
genera, and species of vegetables and animals; 
then to individuals, with such minute variation 
as to forbid repetition, and to preclude identity 
everywhere and in everything; and then she 
advanced to conscious personality. And yet 
there was no increase in the quantity of force; 
certainly, no diminution. If there was change, 
there was no loss." 



88 . AFTER DEATH— WHAT ? 

" Would not the birth of a soul, as it is a 
separate unit of force, disturb the equilibrium 
of force ? " asked the preacher. 

u Not at all," answered the skeptic. " Sup- 
pose every soul born into the world to be a 
part of the totality of this unconscious, imper- 
sonal force, the ever-increasing number of souls 
does not increase the quantity of force in the 
universe, even if they never return to their 
original fountain. A thing may change its 
manifestations by correlation, without increas- 
ing or decreasing its essence. Correlation 
neither creates nor destroys. The quantity of 
force is not affected when heat is transformed 
into electricity, or electricity into heat. A 
pound of molten lead is still a pound, whether 
it be molded into individual bullets or remains 
in the molten mass. So, a portion of uncon- 
scious, impersonal force, or the whole of it, 
may be changed for all time to. come into per- 
sonal force, in the units of human souls, without 
disturbing the assumed constancy of its original 
quantity. The subtrahend and remainder equal 



THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. 89 

the minuend. What unconscious, persistent 
impersonality loses, conscious personality gains, 
and persistent correlation does not disturb the 
equilibrium. And as the tendency of things 
is from sameness to variety, and from one to 
many, from the inorganic to the organic, from 
the indefinite to the definite, from the uncon- 
scious to the conscious, there is every reason, in 
this habit of nature, to expect the impersonal, 
unconscious mass to correlate and perpetuate 
itself in the units of conscious, personal in- 
dividuality. ' ' 

" It seems to me that you are getting on my 
ground. Be careful about your admissions, ,, 
continued the preacher, "for I shall use all 
these principles which you are laying down so 
clearly against your side." 

" You are welcome to all the comfort or sup- 
port you get out of my admissions," replied 
the skeptic. 

"It may not be much," rejoined the preach- 
er, " but I shall make the most of them. You 
have shown how this ' necessary instinct ' makes 



90 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? 

things differ; but bow does it bold on to 
things, or make things hold on to it ? " 

" Of course you do not concur with me in 
opinion/ ' remarked the skeptic. 

" I do not differ from you more than you do 
from me," said the preacher. 

"Nevertheless," continued the skeptic, u all 
real advances persist. Nature never recalls or 
intermits progression; never mistakes the end 
or the means; never changes in vain; never 
sees a reason to undo what she has once done; 
never goes down, but always upward and for- 
ward." 

" So much for phenomena from impersonal 
nature ! And yet," remarked the preacher, 
"there is no talk of a true explanation. The 
mind, accustomed to abstraction, is the dupe 
of an illusion when it takes laws for realities. 
Laws are symbols of order; they do not account 
for order. 1 We are told that as the motion 
which is in everything dissipates, matter inte- 
grates. That is, that matter gets into shape 

1 Cazelles' Evolution, p. 32. 



REASON OF LAW UNKNOWN. 91 

when it gets still. But what quiets matter 
and what makes it integrate or come into 
shape when it is quiet ? " 

" It is a law of Nature," replied the skeptic. 

"Mill says," rejoined the preacher, " that to 
explain one law of nature by another, is simply 
to substitute one mystery for another. We 
can no more assign a reason for the more gen- 
eral laws than for the more partial. 1 And yet, 
if your reasoning proves anything for science, 
it proves more for religion." 

"How so?" 

" Let me show you. Your Nature, with her 
'immanent, necessary instinct,' does not per- 
petuate, as real gains, such transformations as 
heat into electricity, or of electricity into heat; 
of gases into rocks, or of rocks into gases; of 
minerals into vegetables, or of vegetables into 
animals. In these ebbs and flows of matter, 
these working correlations change everything 
and gain nothing." 

u I beg your pardon," interrupted the skep- 

iMHl's Logic, p. 276. 



92 AFTER DEATH— WHAT ? 

tic, " Nature ever progresses and ever gains. 
She advanced from chaos and gained organi- 
zation; she advanced -from organization and 
gained vegetable life; she advanced from veg- 
etable life to animal life." 

" Are these gains ? " inquired the preacher. 

" If they are not, what are ? " answered the 
skeptic. "If you mount by terraces, is not 
each terrace a gain in altitude, quality of 
atmosphere, and extent of view ? Has not the 
man on the top of the mountain gained much 
over the man at its base ? " 

" Yes, the man at the top, but not the brute 
in any grade, for whom sublimity is in vain. 
It needs no lofty tower or mountain-peak to 
enable it to study the stars in their courses. 
For it in vain the soft influence of the Pleiads, 
or the face of Orion or Arcturus. It aspires 
not from nature to supernature. All it wants 
is food. For it there need be no loom or 
spindles. It has appetites, but no desires. 
Its organization is low, and its future is lim- 
ited. It never acts upon any ideas, except 



BRUTE MINDS LIMITED. 93 

those which conduce to its two aims, its personal 
well-being and its propagation; consequently, 
we may conclude that its brain only resolves a 
certain class of forces, and that another class 
appreciated by man are not cognizable by the 
brute. 1 Like the collodionized plate, the un- 
conscious self registers only one class of phe- 
nomena. The beast lives for itself, for its 
animal nature; it has no other pleasures, for it 
has no other nature. A horse is indifferent to 
the rainbow, because the rainbow in no way 
affects its well-being. 2 The human mind is 
open to a chain of pleasurable impressions, in 
no way conducive to the preservation of man's 
sensual being, and to the perpetuation of his 
race. He derives pleasure from harmonies of 
color, and grace of form, and from melodious 
succession of notes. His animal life needs 
neither. He is conscious of desires which the 
gratification of passion does not satisfy, for they 

1 Baring Gould's " Origin and Development of Religions 
Ideas," 51. 

2 Ibid, 5. 



94 AFTER DEATH— WHAT 1 

are beside and beyond the animal instincts. 
Man derives his liveliest gratification and 
acutest pain from objects to which his ani- 
mal consciousnes is indifferent. The rainbow 
charms him. Why ? Because the sight con- 
duces to the welfare of his spiritual being. 1 
The religious instinct, (which is a desire to 
follow out a law of our being) is the feeling of 
man after an individual aim other than that of** 
his animal nature. 2 Brute intelligence is not a 
conscious intelligence, and therefore no gain." 
"Does the artist," continued the preacher, 
" who moulds in clay, consider himself to have 
gained anything by the image which he breaks ? 
or the painter who thinks in chalk, anything 
in forms which he rubs out as soon as finished ? 
Can nature be said to have gained anything in 
individualities which she ever most remorse- 
lessly extinguishes ? She makes the individual 
crystal, and dissolves it into gas. She shoots 
up countless blades of grass, and lifts up the 

1 Baring Gould's " Origin and Development of Religious 
Ideas," 5. 
a Ibid, 61. 



IS BRUTE INTELLIGENCE A GAIN ? 95 

forms of shrub and tree, and draws them back 
dead into her mysterious workshop. She 
quickens the pulse of insects, brutes and birds 
with individual life, and beats them down again 
in indistinguishable dust, leaving in the uni- 
verse neither memory nor trace of their indi- 
vidual, unpersonalized existence." 

" How do you account for this destructive- 
ness of nature, then ? " asked the skeptic. 

" Nature, as you scientists present her, uses 
mere grade and individuality in her manifesta- 
tions only as a working convenience. Below 
conscious individuality, which we call personal- 
ity, no individuality persists. In other words, 
nature does not regard nor prize mere uncon- 
scious individuality as a real advance or gain. 
If she did, she would not so invariably demolish 
her work. We do not destroy that which we 
value. If nature progresses, she does not hold 
mere individuality to be progress, or she would 
preserve it. We cannot progress by going 
back along our own steps." 

" Do you consider a man on the mountain top 
to have gained nothing ? " 



96 AFTER DEATH— WHAT ? 

"Altitude, however high, whose material 
base may at any moment dissolve beneath the 
feet and destroy him, is no gain. If man can 
be lifted from off the mountain top, so that he 
can abide aloft, upheld by ' Everlasting Arms,' 
whatever may crumble beneath him, then, and 
not till then, can he be said to have gained in 
the movements of existence." 

" When nature made individual animals, 
automatic and intelligent, what else could she 
make as a gain ? " 

" She gained consciousness. Why should 
the 'necessary, immanent instinct,' of which 
Buckner and yourself speak, having progressed 
so far, and, as you seem to think, have gained 
so much, not progress further .and gain more ? 
Why should it stop at an unconscious animal ? 
We see that it did not. We see that it went 
on to the conscious man. Or, why, having 
lifted the animal upward along the terraces of 
phenomena, and placed his feet in the frozen 
dust on the mountain top, not lift his feet still 
higher, and endow him with power to move 



IS BHUTE INTELLIGENCE A GAIN ? 97 

like the stars, in individual and perpetual 
glory, above matter ? " 

"His feet would then, indeed," said the 
skeptic, " be ballooning on 'airy nothing/ 
Better keep them on the solid support of the 
top terrace." 

6C I see," replied the preacher, " that you 
would keep the animal, whether man or brute, 
on the top terrace, close down to matter." 

" What else can he stand on ? " 

"What," inquired the preacher, " does the 
top terrace stand on ? " 

"Why, on the terrace below," replied the 
skeptic." 

" What does the bottom terrace stand on ? " 

" On — on — Force, I suppose." 

" Then, if the series of terraces can stand on 
force below them, why may not man stand on 
force above them ? " 

" Force is matter," remarked the skeptic. 

"So force is mind," replied the preacher, 
" yet mind and matter and one kind of force 
are not identical." 

5 



98 AFTEH DEATH— WHAT? 

" Prove that," said the skeptic. 

" An atom is matter, is it not ? " 

"Yes." 

" The force of gravitation in an atom pulls 
from the centre of the atom, does it not ? " 

"Yes." 

"In imagination peel off* the outside of that 
atom until you have got down to the centre, 
You have got down to force, have you not ? " 

"Yes." 

" But where is your matter ? You have 
your force which must transcend matter, but 
your atom, which was matter, is gone. No, no, 
my friend. Give up such nonsense as confound- 
ing matter and force. They may be associated, 
but cannot be identical. The man in the sad- 
dle is not the same thing as the horse beneath 
him, which he guides with a bit and bridle. 
Force guides matter, but is not matter, unless 
a thing can be said to guide itself, when it is 
not itself, but something else. Let us come 
back to common sense. What is there so at- 
tractive in matter, or what in it so necessary to 



WHICH WAS FIRST, MATTER OR MIND 1 99 

personality, that man must be chained to it 
forever ? Blind nature, or your ' immanent 
necessary instinct,' knows no reason for begin- 
ning at matter more than at mind, or for stop- 
ping at matter or at mere mind. Why should 
it not rise and progress forever, and gain for- 
ever ? If nature began at matter, why should 
it not go on to mind as we see it did ; and if it 
began in mind, why should it sink back into 
mere matter ? The force that has brought it 
on from the past is neither exhausted nor be- 
wildered, and can carry it on in the future." 1 

u Do you venture to say," asked the skeptic, 
" that nature has made anything higher than 
animal life ? If so, what ? " 

" She made you." 

" What is your meaning ? " 

"To compliment you. Nature, as yon call 
it, rose above the animal, and made you, and 
me, and all our fellow men." 

1 This rather proves that all matter is only manifestations 
of mind, as so many ancient and modern philosophers have 
contended. For if matter is force and force is mind, then 
matter is mind, and so it is no longer matter. Individual 
phenomena are then only special and changing thoughts. 



100 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? 

" How do you prove that men are anything 
more than a race of animals ? " 

"By your own admitted principles. You 
contend that nature ever progresses and gains. 
JSTow, the mere animal must, according to this 
theory, be improved upon, and so on to the 
summit of being. If blind nature found its 
way from nothing to a conscious, reasoning man, 
we can be quite sure that it knows its way to 
an omniscient God. If a Personal Being did 
not create nature, nature has, in man, created 
a personal being. There is a God at one end 
or the other of progress. The more uncon- 
scious things are at the beginning, the more 
conscious they must be in the end. Develop- 
ment cannot be stopped. If out of nihilism 
nature evolves life, why should it not out of life 
evolve immortality ? When nature begins, 
what is to stop her ? If she creates many things 
both in kind and number, she is seen, in all 
that we observe, to preserve the best. As be- 
tween individuals and types and forces, is it 
not according to her most evident way of work- 



THE FITTEST SURVIVES. 101 

ing that mind-force, as the utilizer of all mani- 
festations of force, should survive as the fittest 
of all ? Whatever else may cease, we cannot 
suppose that consciousness as the supreme fact 
in the universe can cease. Kature never in- 
verts the pyramid. Why should conscious, 
personal mind-force perish, and unconscious, 
impersonal matter-force survive ? In what is 
the immortal power of the one, and in what is 
the mortal weakness of the other ? Is imper- 
sonality superior to personality, or unconscious- 
ness to consciousness ? Does the universal 
thinking of mankind put a thing above or on 
the same level with a person ? Is a stone supe- 
rior or equal in the order of nature to Shaks- 
peare, or a vial of electricity to David and 
Isaiah ? Is blindness the honor of nature ? Is 
a mole nearer the summit of her glory than an 
eagle ? Is the idiot more the perfection of 
nature than Socrates ? Such a preference on 
the part of nature, if it were possible, were the 
choice of a fool. When the impersonal force 
defines itself by leaping up into personal or will 



102 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? 

force, or unconsciousness awakens into conscious- 
ness, there would seem to be a gain indeed 
worth preserving, if anything is. In every 
sense and for every movement of nature, the 
persona], the conscious, the coherent, the defi- 
nite, the moral would be the fittest, both for 
worth and for struggle. If I were quoting 
Scripture, I would remind you of the Master's 
promise, " Because I live, ye shall live also." 
"But," continuing the skeptic, "I must in- 
sist that the doctrine of the conservation or 
persistence of force does not prove the immor- 
tality of the individual soul. Herbert Spencer 
says : x 4 By the persistence of force, we really 
mean some power which transcends our knowl- 
edge and conception. The manifestations, as 
occurring either in ourselves or outside of us, 
do not persist; but that which persists is the 
unknown cause of these manifestations. In 
other words, asserting the persistence of force 
is* but another mode of asserting an uncon- 
ditional reality, without beginning or end/ 

1 First Principles, chap. VI, sec 60. 



THE THREE PROOFS. 103 

The soul is not a force itself, but only a mani- 
festation of it. The unknown cause persists— 
the effect perishes." 

"This must refer," replied the preacher, 
"to the manifestation of blind, unintelligent, 
impersonal force, such as heat, electricity, and 
gravitation; but as a force, mind and its work, 
or manifestation, are one and the same. The 
mind is conscious that it is a power, force, or 
cause, unto itself; and, of course, takes no 
knowledge of itself as a mere manifestation, 
from any cause whatever, known or unknown." 

"In reasoning," said the skeptic, "upon the 
immortality of the soul, from the law of the 
persistence of type, the persistence of con- 
sciousness, and the persistence of force, you 
pursue three independent, if not conflicting 
lines of argument. ' ' 

"I will give up either," remarked the 
preacher, " if you will admit the sufficiency of 
the others. These arguments are either all 
true or all false, or one is true and the others 
false. That all three are true, you deny. If 



104 AFTEH DEATH— WHAT? 

one be true, it matters not if the others be false. 
If all are false, as you assume, your dilemma is 
greater than mine." 

" How do you show that ? " 

' ' Because, as we know the soul to exist now 
as a supreme fact, if I fail by either or all of 
these, your best scientific arguments, to prove 
the immortality which I affirm, then you must 
prove the mortality which you affirm. To 
prove that anything exists, raises the presump- 
tion of its perpetual continuance, under any and 
every possible change. If you deny the pre- 
sumption, you must prove your denial. ' ' 

" Your failure is my success. The failure to 
prove the immortality of the soul establishes 
its mortality." 

"Not at all. The existence of the soul in 
life is admitted to be the most exalted force in 
the universe. If you admit that the uncon- 
scious, impersonal force, such as electricity or 
heat, persists, though its presence may be con- 
cealed, a fortiori you must admit that the 
greater, more intelligent force of the conscious, 



CHANGE IS NOT ANNIHILATION. 105 

personal soul must persist, though its presence 
may be concealed. Disappearance, in neither 
case, is destruction. The affirmation that it 
ceases to exist after death must be proved as 
an independent proposition by the one who 
makes it." 

K " We have no knowledge of it after death," 
said the skeptic. 

"That," replied the preacher, "is no proof 
that it has ceased to be. Change is not anni- 
hilation. Force does not cease because it 
changes its manifestations, or conceals its pres- 
ence. When heat is changed into electricity, 
no force is destroyed. The traveler is not dead 
because he is out of sight. Existence does not 
depend on manifestation. Light reveals this 
world, but it conceals all others. What death 
is, no one can tell another. It is a secret for 
each. But science proclaims that everywhere 
within its searching vision life is triumphant. 
Reason eagerly explores the field of our own 
future probabilities, and revelation certifies and 
glorifies the fact of human immortality. Life 

5* 



106 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? 

is omnipresent. No part of this universe is 
dead. Life is triumphant. It must be the 
master, or all things would end. Life is con- 
tinuous. The one living grain of wheat ex- 
pands itself into a hundred lives. Death is the 
last enemy, and life the last friend, in the eter- 
nal economy. " 

"But," replied the skeptic, "admitting a 
brute to be a mere impersonal individual, 
and man to be distinguished by having his 
individuality lifted into what is understood 
as personal consciousness, and admitting that 
the soul of man, as mind-force, cannot be 
annihilated, I still contend that death oblit- 
erates its individuality and personality, and 
reduces both the mind of the individual brute 
and the mind of the personal man to the 
same impersonal level of the one universal 
force. They are but manifestations of force, 
and are reabsorbed into the eternal abyss of 
all force. This doctrine of emanation and 
reabsorption was taught by Aristotle three 
hundred and fifty years before, and reproduced 



IMPERSONAL FORCE REABSORBED. 107 

by Averroes, an Arabian Philosopher of Spain, 
one thousand two hundred years after Christ, 
and has been held by the Hindoos in all ages. 
Is it not Herbert Spencer's theory, too i To me 
it is the only solution of the life of the soul. 
With Aristotle, Constructive Reason, 1 as distin- 
guished from Passive Reason, 2 which receives 
the impression of external things, and perishes 
with the body, transcends the body, and is 
capable of separation from it. This Constructive 
Reason is one individual substance, or universal 
soul, being one in Socrates, Plato, and other 
individuals. 3 Whence it follows that individu- 
ality consists only in bodily sensations, which 
are perishable; so that nothing which is 
individual can be immortal, and nothing which 
is immortal can be individual." 

1 Herbert Spencer calls this 'Absolute Being,' 'Unknown 
Cause,' 'Power,' 'Force,' ' Unconditioned Reality, without 
Beginning or End.' The Athenians call it 'The Unknown 
God.' 

2 Herbert. Spencer calls this 'Manifestations of force which 
perish.' 

3 What is this but the idea of One God, who breathed in the 
body of man the breath of life, and he became a living soul, 
as taught in the Scriptures ? Gen. ii: 7. 



108 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? 

"I admit," said the preacher, "that while, 
this will answer as well as any other specula- 
tion to account for the perishableness of imper- 
sonal individuality, it is not satisfactory as to 
the future of personal individuality. Vast is 
the difference upward from an individual thing 
to an individual person. Any way, the theory 
of Aristotle, as reproduced by Averroes, proves 
too much. It admits that this Constructive 
Reason is one individual substance. But how, 
according to this theory, can it be immortal, if 
it be individual ? If individuality destroys 
immortality, and immortality destroys indi- 
viduality, then the constructive reason of 
Aristotle, and even the lauded Nirvana, of the 
Buddhist, cannot be, because it is both one and 
immortal." 

" I had not thought of that," interrupted the 
skeptic. " I thought that Aristotle and Aver- 
roes, his commentator, proved conclusively that 
nothing that is individual could be immortal." 

" The error of both Aristotle and Averroes, 
was in antagonizing immortality and personal 



THE NIRVANA OF THE BUDDHISTS. 109 

individuality. It may be conceded that their 
theory was plausible as to impersonal individu- 
ality; but the soul is immortal, according to 
science, not because it is an individual, but 
because it is a force, and so, supreme over 
matter. Above all other force, it has both 
individuality and personality, and apart from 
these grand distinctions we know nothing 
of it." 

" But let us go a little further, and see where 
this extinction of all individuality and person- 
ality would land us. Suppose a soul steeped in 
all possible wickedness to die in the midst of 
all its vileness, and with the loss of its individu- 
ality and personal identity, it is reabsorbed in 
the great abyss of mind. The Buddhists call 
this abyss Xirvana. Xow the soul must be 
reabsorbed as it is, bad; not as it is not, good. 
Ink, if you keep on dropping it long enough, 
will finally blacken the ocean, and kill all life 
contained in its illimitable depths. Suppose 
this absorption to go on for countless ages, bad 
spirits after bad spirits taken into its very 



110 AFTEK DEATH— WHAT? 

essence; what must Nirvana itself become after 
feeding so long upon such food, in spite of the 
good spirits, if any, that may go there too ? 
Its eternal accretions of evil make Nirvana a 
hell." 

" You forget," interrupted the skeptic, " that 
when the soul loses its individuality, it loses its 
consciousness, and so escapes suffering." 

" On the contrary, in the loss of its individu- 
ality and absorption into infinitude consists its 
horror. For, instead of a finite consciousness 
which it has lost, it acquires an infinite con- 
sciousness which is ever reabsorbing evil. 
Every soul that it engorges brings in its evil, 
and makes Nirvana the cess-pool of the uni- 
verse. This becomes ' hell with a vengeance.' 

"Dost thou like the picture?" 

" Lo ! the hell of reason ! I must leave the 
skeptic, minus his individuality, but plus his 
Nirvana. And such a Nirvana ! " 

The skeptic was silent. The preacher con- 
tinued. " The immortality of the soul, as a pre- 
liminary question, having been thus estab- 



HELL A NECESSITY. Ill 

lished, though after many and practical diver- 
sions, let us now proceed with an examination 
of the scientific reasons for a belief in a future 
state of endless punishment, or 

4 

2. Hell as a Necessity of Evolution. 

(a.) The Laic of Grouping Proves a Hell. 

" Do you not see, in all nature, a certain be- 
havior of like to like, similis simili gaudet? 
This, in evolution, is known as one of the sec- 
ondary laws of evolution, called segregation. 
Under this particular movement of evolution, 
it is shown that in mixed aggregates not only 
do units of like kind tend to gather together, 
but units of unlike kind tend to separate. 
Action and reaction are equal and opposite. 
Units are repelled from each other by antipa- 
thies. The good and the evil mutually repel 
each other, and the good attracts the good, and 
the evil attracts the evil. The homogeneous 
becomes the heterogeneous. The law of like 
becomes more definite. 



112 AFTER DEATH— WHAT 1 

" Do not all things assert themselves ? Antip- 
athy of evil to good is hell. ' Birds of a feather 
flock together.' What is the law of chemical 
affinity but the law of congenial wedlock ? 
Things harmonize together because they suit 
each other ; and things fly off from each other 
because they do not suit each other. Now, 
this law of attraction and repulsion runs through 
all the universe. Heat divorces the worlds, 
and in its absence, gravitation draws them to- 
ward each other. Oil and water will not mix. 
So with people. They go together very much 
by congeniality. Moral qualities group them 
by a fixed law. The vicious naturally run with 
each other, and the good just as naturally fra- 
ternize. Your laws of nature are inexorable 
and invariable. Account for it as you may, it 
is so. This is your great Nature God. Just 
follow this law of like to like out to its eternal 
consequences, and I think you will have hell 
enough. It is conjectured that a soul enters 
the invisible world every second. If one in 
every ten, or a thousand, or a million, be bad, 



HELL FROM SYMPATHY. 113 

with low, vile, malicious, beastly appetites and 
passions, after a while you will have, some- 
where in that world, quite a multitude of 
devils, or one vast master devil, if they re- 
turn to and poison their source. They would, 
acting upon your law of nature of like to like, 
naturally make a local hell. 

(b.) The Law of Sympathy or Association. 

"Evil is attracted to evil. Every city has 
its preliminary hells — its slums, its bar-rooms, 
where human carcasses lie in beastly stupor, 
without moral minds, and in rags. The definite 
becomes more definite. One drunkard knows 
and consorts with another drunkard. A com- 
mon shame and love of licentiousness socializes 
and localizes vile women. Thieves band to- 
gether with thieves. Human nature must have 
sympathy and companionship, though that 
companionship makes a hell apart in its own 
solitary locality. If one evil spirit bears a 
mental hell within, two evil spirits make a 
local hell without. They hunt each other up, 



114 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? 

and if you think such a set of fiends do not 
make a local hell, I am sure they do not make 
heaven anywhere. 

"But, then," said the skeptic, "they are to 
be spiritually changed." 

"Now you are getting from your rigid 
ground of nature to my ground of superna- 
ture," said the preacher. "Keep on your plane 
of science and invariable laws, and leave my 
side of grace and spiritual help to me." 

" Do not be uneasy," replied the skeptic. "I 
stand by invariable laws." 

"Very w$U, then," continued the preacher, 
" beside your laws of affinity and associations, 
or of like to like, there is, 

(<?.) The Law of Growth. 

" This is also an awful law in the solution of 
the destiny of the soul. Look at it in matter. 
From one little acorn what a sturdy oak will 
arise, striking its roots deep and wide in the 
earth, and spreading abroad strong limbs and 
countless leaves ! What a hard, tough, defiant 



HELL FROM A LAW OF GROWTH. 115 

life comes out of that acorn! From one little 
mustard seed grows a home for the birds. 
Where two lines meet, how small the angle; 
but project them into infinity, and how infinite- 
ly expanded becomes the included figure. Hu- 
man imagination cannot depict what one thing, 
as a cause, may become in its effects. An act is 
never done acting. Like the pressure of the 
arch, it never sleeps. Because an act, good or 
evil, is simply one, it may, though one, like 
space, embrace a universe. 

"All revolutions, riots and reforms are 
growths from some one idea. Panics, super- 
stitions, popular prejudices, and national ani- 
mosities are growths. Heretical opinion will 
mislead long eras under the influence of the 
law of growth. Evil grows spontaneously. 
Good must be constantly cultivated. Evil has 
its natural life in and by us. Good is wrought 
supernaturally for us. Like the robe of royalty, 
or the canopy of the skies, it is above and 
around us — not naturally of us. Besides, kin- 
dred to this, look at 



116 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? 

(d) The Law of Propagation. 

u Terrence says : Fallacia alia aliam trudit : 
One falsehood begets another. 

" From one acorn comes a whole granary of 
acorns, each having a new life in its heart. How 
many grains of wheat may come from one, at 
each successive planting ! Put one cent at in- 
terest when a child is born, and what will be 
the earnings, when the child reaches manhood ? 
A strong bad boy will corrupt a whole school 
of boys. Now apply these two laws of growth 
and propagation to the history of a human 
soul ! Their devastation is more readily ob- 
served in the career of the drunkard, than in any 
other. One debauch afiects the stomach and 
destroys the appetite ; it congests the brain and 
stupefies the mind ; it enervates the will and 
enfeebles the muscles. The second debauch 
is still easier, and the third still more easy. 
This is illustrated in mournful multitudes around 
us every day. The law of derivation, as applied 
to evil and its consequences, is inexepressibly 
horrible. 



PROPAGATION AND INVOLUTION. 117 

(e.) The Law of Involution Proves It. 

"Every seed inherits a life. This life has 
two energies — the energy to absorb from the 
without to the within, and the energy to ex- 
pand from the within to the without. The first 
is that of involution or assimilation. This life 
must appropriate something from the sun, the 
clouds, and the earth, before its second energy 
of evolution or expansion from the within to 
the without, can become active. What it gives 
out depends on what it takes in. In the lan- 
guage of evolution, this is environment ; former- 
ly called the force of circumstances. The life 
of the seed, having involved or fed upon earth, 
moisture, and heat, evolves the tree, and trans- 
mits the life to other seeds; so, when from in- 
ward character, we attract evil associations and 
absorb from them sin, we develop or evolve 
that which we have assimilated. Let me quote 
aptly : c With the merciful thou wilt show thy- 
self merciful; with an upright man thou wilt 
show thyself upright; with the pure thou wilt 



118 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? 

show thyself pure; and with the froward thou 
wilt show thyself froward.' (18 Ps. xxv : 6.) 
4 God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man 
soweth that shall he also reap. For he that 
soweth to the flesh, shall of the flesh reap cor- 
ruption; but he that soweth to the spirit, shall 
of the spirit reap life everlasting.' (Gal. vi : 
7.) We may absorb evil or we may absorb 
good, and the development or evolution will be 
according to the one or the other. Involution 
is to take or extract energy from our circum- 
stances. Evolution is to give or impart energy 
to our circumstances. The man who takes in 
good will give out good, and the man who takes 
in evil will give out evil. The man who asso- 
ciates with a devil will himself become devilish, 
and one who dwells with an angel will himself 
become angelic. The maxim is true by the 
laws of science — a thing is known by its assim- 
ilations — ' a man is known by the company he 
keeps.' These external influences, or environ- 
ments, change the life in the soul of man, as 
environments develop and change the life in the 



EVOLUTION PROVES A HELL. 119 

seed of the tree. We must involve or take 
into our life the mind or life of a Christ, if we 
would evolve his character or move in his lines 
of happiness. 

(/.) The Theory of Evolution. 

" The theory of evolution, or matter without 
a God, formerly called development, proclaims 
a way of nature to be in this law of growth, as 
we have said, that everything progresses forever." 

" That is exactly it," interrupted the skeptic; 
" everything progresses forever. Look along 
that line and you will see heaven, so far as any- 
thing can be seen in the future." 

"And you look along that line," said the 
preacher, " and you will see hell. Evil pro- 
gresses, results in hell, and the necessity to 
progress forever makes that hell eternal." 

"The sins of the body cannot progress for- 
ever, for they cease with the death of the 
body," remarked the skeptic. 

"Yes," replied the preacher, " but the sins 
of the mind will progress forever, for they con- 
tinue with the life of the mind." 



120 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? 

"As from the bottom of the hill the grade 
is upward, so from the top of the hill the grade 
is downward. In the law of change — detected 
by the ceaseless search of science — there is an 
eternal devolution or movement downward, as 
well as an eternal evolution or movement up- 
ward. The science of humanity shows three 
things: First — That human nature is down 
close to animals and fiends, and tends still 
lower. Second — That it needs to be helped up, 
for it cannot rise of itself. And third — That 
when up, it needs to be held up, for it cannot 
hold itself up. This is evident in the decline 
of men, schools of thought, and conquering 
races. There is no Solon in the Areopagus, or 
Socrates in the streets of Athens, nor Cicero in 
the Forum, or Caesar at the Capitol of Rome. 
The scepter has departed from Judah. The 
falling off of genius, as shown in the science or 
history of heredity, shows that there is no self- 
elevating power inherent in human nature. An 
eminent man is a surprise to the race. He is 
wondered at as a prodigy, if not adored as a 



HUMAN NATURE A FAILURE. 121 

god. He has no successor. His descendants 
may be fools or fiends. If his great ability 
descends, it will be with a flickering light, and, 
as a rule, in the fourth generation go entirely 
out. Let the degradation go on, and the race 
wind up in human devils, for whom we men 
have prisons on earth and science a bell here- 
after. That the law of human nature is to fall, 
not rise, is evident from the history of pauper 
individuals, the rapid deterioration of aristo- 
cratic families, however gifted bv nature and 
favored by circumstances. All flattery of 
human nature and applause of distinguished 
exceptions, is directly in the teeth of the honest 
conclusions of science. Humanity is a failure, 
and science, with no practical remedy to offer, 
is amazed in the presence of the fact. Reject- 
ing the merciful help of the Redeemer, science 
seeks to struggle alone with the mournful doom 
which is even now upon man ; and for the glo- 
rious, comforting, and regenerating hope of the 
one, we are left in the cold, dark despair of the 
other. Science lights the way to an inevitable 

6 



122 AFTER DEATH— WHAT 1 

hell, and scornfully rejects all revealed helps to 
a Savior's heaven. 1 ' 

"Still," observed the skeptic, "God (your 
God) is a Father." 

"Still," echoed the preacher, " these are 
facts. Your idea of the Fatherhood of God is 
all wrong ; nor is your idea of the sovereignty 
of God all right. When not so ignorant of 
yourself, you will know more of God. Obedi- 
ent children have loving fathers, but rebellious 
citizens have stern rulers. God is a Father, 
and God is a Sovereign, and yet human nature 
runs down ; and so persistent is the law of dev- 
olution that it runs down in spite of secular 
and repressive force, and under the very shadow 
of the Cross itself." 

"Why does not God stop it?" sneeringly 
inquired the skeptic. 

"Why does not the new religion of science 
stop it ? " replied the preacher. " Science has 
full opportunity to arrest the declension of hu- 
man nature, but no power ; God has the power 
to regenerate human nature and lift it up, but 



KNOWLEDGE IS NOT MORALITY. 123 

in the blindness of science and the perverseness 
of the human heart, He has slight opportunity. 
He does all that man will let him do." 

" Suppose," said the skeptic, "that a man 
reforms his evil life ? " 

" What will make him do it ? " inquired the 
preacher. 

" Improvement in knowledge." 

"Has it ever done it ? " 

"Experience of the disadvantage of evil, 
then, will," said the skeptic. 

" Has that ever done it ? According to your 
invariable, inexorable laws of nature, (with no 
God behind them) things have no power to 
stop themselves. They evolve because they 
must. Your law is that everything, including 
evil, progresses forever. Do not back out from 
your law. Stand by it. You have nothing 
left but—" 

"Hell, you would say?" interrupted the 
skeptie. 

"There is nothing else from your stand- 
point," replied the preacher. "Everything 



124 AFTER DEATH— WHAT 1 

progresses forever. If you project a ball, it 
will go on forever unless something else stops 
it; it cannot stop itself, nor can it change itself. 
For matter to change, it must be combined 
with some other matter. Oxygen, by itself, 
will ever remain oxygen, and hydipgen, by 
itself, will ever remain hydrogen ; but combine 
the two and they become water. But in them- 
selves they are inert." 

" How is it as to mind ? " asked the other. 

"It, too, goes on, and forever. As a force, 
it cannot go out. It may change its sphere, 
but not its essence or its office. All that we 
see and know of mind is as a force and an indi- 
viduality. Each one is conscious that his mind 
is his own, and not another's. The creed of 
evolution is intensification, integration, persist- 
ence. We know as much of the individuality 
of the mind as we know of the mind itself. 
The consciousness of the mind and its individu- 
ality is one and the same. We may as well 
expect the mind itself to perish, as to expect 
its individuality and personality to perish. The 



GROWTH OF EVIL HORRIBLE. 125 

mind can make itself, generically, no other 
thing than it is. It is mind, and not matter; 
and mind, and not matter, it must ever be. 
Whatever it is, it is so as an individual. As 
nature never abdicates itself, mind can never 
surrender or extinguish itself, or be less mind; 
but your laws of nature compel it to be more 
mind, whether good or bad. It must progress 
fearfully in evil or gloriously in good." 

" I suppose," said the skeptic, " that is the 
way you get into your heaven." 

"Never mind that; but this is the way," 
replied the preacher, " that you get into your 
hell. The evil in man grows into the infinite 
in evil, and that is a hell; and many evil spirits 
associating together, upon the law of like to 
like, make a local hell; more of a hell than any 
brimstone could make it. To return, then, to 
their source, only poisons it yet the more, and 
.the Persian Ahriman, or God-devil, results. 

"But I deny," said the other, "that any- 
thing survives that is not worth surviving." 

"The truth of science teaches something 



126 AFTER DEATH— WHAT 1 

more," responds the preacher. "The science 
of the present teaches us to expect in the future 
the survival of the worst as well as the best. 
Each survives by a life of its own, and the sur- 
vival of one does not require the death of the 
other — at least, it is so in this world, and why 
not in the next ? Wicked men prosper as well 
as the good. Weeds destroy flowers. Wise 
laws do not make all citizens virtuous. The 
knowledge of the rule does not inspire us with 
a love for the principle. Civilization changes 
the crime, but not the criminal. Education lifts 
the thieving boy into the forging man. We 
have the Declaration of Independence, and the 
threat of the Commune. Evil changes its 
name, but not its nature." 

" But," says the skeptic, u evil forfeits indi- 
viduality." 

"Evil, in the sense of sin, belongs to char- 
acter, and forfeits only happiness. Personal 
individuality, whether the creation of evil or an 
evolution of law, pertains to existence, and en- 
dures forever. According to material science, 



EVIL PROGRESSES FOREVER. 127 

nature is no moralist, and knows nothing of 
good or evil. As all phenomena with her are 
invisible successions rather than voluntary de- 
partures, so there can be no forfeitures, because 
there is no disobedience. With her there are 
sequences, but no consequences; and everything 
is material and nothing moral. And so the 
soul cannot be annihilated because it is evil, 
nor exist forever because it is good." 

"A soul," continued the preacher, " is not an- 
nihilated because it is evil. As it is not immor- 
tal because it is individual, so it is not immortal 
because it is good. It exists not because it 
is either good or an individual, but because, 
according to science, it is a force, and cannot 
perish. The mind is no less a force because it 
is evil ; but for that reason it is a more terrible 
force. It is a force because it is mind, irrespec- 
tive of all moral considerations, and as such 
force it is imperishable. Evil has a law of 
growth as well as good. If this reasoning be 
correct, we have in the human soul, saturated 
with evil, an imperishable, ever-growing intelli- 



128 AFTER DEATH— WHAT ? 

gence, incapable of suicide. As neither matter 
nor mind, according to modern science, can 
stop itself, it is under the inevitable necessity, . 
unless some supreme force intervene, as the 
hand arrests the descending ball, to fall forever 
and forever, beyond the unfathomable depth 
of the infinite line of even transcendental geom- 
etry. 

u No atom inherits power. Power is a gift to 
everything. Like a world once out of its orbit 
that must go on increasing the troubles inci- 
dent to its misbehavior, so the soul must, 
according to science, keep on in evil or good 
until it is stopped. Every atom has its own 
place. Suppose it to step disobediently out of 
its place for one brief second, what would be 
the result ? All rays of light would be mixed 
and darkened ; all waves of sound would be 
obliterated and silenced ; the circuits of the 
winds would become confused ; the unpoised 
planets would hurtle in the void immense ; the 
"earth insanely plunge amidst the unutterable 
horrors ; all leaves would wither and die ; all 



EVIL PROGRESSES FOREVER. 129 

beauties become hideous to behold ; all life 
expire, and the whole universe become one 
hell of quivering matter, and so continue until 
readjusted by the original force of the first in- 
telligence. This is the truth of science. 

" When the mind steps out of its place and 
function, there is madness. The soul, in its 
proper sphere, has ultimate happiness ; out of 
its proper sphere, is ultimate hell. 

" The soul of man — by which is here meant 
all in him not material — is a force, like all force, 
solemnly everlasting. As to impersonal, uncoi> 
scious, willess force, unknown apart from mat- 
ter, it cannot disobey ; and if it did, it could 
not suffer. But it is far otherwise with soul- 
force. It is free to determine within and for 
itself whether it will agree or disagree with 
other forces, whether in nature or supernature. 
If the former, it is in harmony ; if the latter, it 
is in discord, and all discord is so much hell. 

u As everything, unresisted, progresses for- 
ever, so the soul-force must, by its nature, 

develop to infinity the good or evil it chooses. 
6* 



130 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? 

And it differs from all blind force in that it has 
its power of choice. As the presence of matter- 
force is always equal to the quality and relations 
of matter, so soul-force develops in a good or 
bad direction according to the opportunity and 
the absence of restraint. The soul, which is 
ever somewhere, makes its own local hell. The 
question is not whether some unmerciful 
Superior plunges man into everlasting punish- 
ment ; but the question is, how far will some 
merciful Superior prevent man, in his immor- 
tality as a soul-force and his willful progress in 
evil, from plunging himself ? All nature in- 
quires of man, with the emphasis of woe, 
' Why will you be eternally miserable ? ' Now, 
observe the relentless hell of science, without 
mercy, hope or end ! It indignantly denies, by 
its axioms, that the soul can be annihilated. 
Nature drops nothing. Evil has no power in 
itself to change itself, and science worships no 
God who would change it. Evil must continue 
evil, and suffering must ever be suffering. 
Science makes Nature a dreadful, merciless 



MAN'S HELL NOT OF GOD. 131 

monarch, indeed ! Nature never retraces its 
steps. Nothing that we say, or do, or think, or 
are, can be obliterated. It must ever remain 
and develop. 6 Everything progresses forever/ 
shouts the Angel of Evolution to Virtue, to 
encourage its flagging energies. And < every- 
thing progresses forever,' warns remorseless 
Evolution to vice as it chafes under supernatu- 
ral restraint. As an atom out of its material 
place convulses all the material forces, so does a 
soul out of its moral place disturb all moral 
forces. The one creates disturbance, and is a 
hell in matter. The other creates mental hor- 
rors, and it is a hell in mind. God creates no 
hell for man, but warns him from his own. 
Man is his own hell, not from remorse, but 
for his evil for which he has no remorse. Ee- 
morse arrests not sin. Remorse is the least of 
hell. Hell is in the evil which causes remorse. 
As the oak is but an unfolded acorn, so hell 
is but expanded or unfolded sin. As the sea is 
but the cistern of the rivers, so hell is but the 
cistern of sin. To be warned of hell is not 



132 AFTER DEATH— WHAT ] 

sufficient. Every evil is a blind giant, igno- 
rant of itself, heedless of warnings, and almost 
defiant of resistance, and unapproachable by 
help. A man is warned that drunkenness will 
becloud the mind, bestialize the body, and ruin 
fortune and fame. He does not heed the warn- 
ing. He drinks yet deeper. To suffer does 
not reform. He actually suffers indescribable 
agonies, yet he will not heed. Others, most 
dear to him, wife and children, suffer on his 
account, yet he drinks. It is even worse with 
lust. The impure touch makes the leper. How 
often do we see parents going down to their 
graves in sorrow because of the dreadful power 
of some ruinous sin upon a precious child, that 
would not, and finally, perhaps, cannot, cease to 
do evil ? Indeed, science is mournfully true : 
'unresisted, everything progresses forever.' 
The evil mind is an architect that hourly adds 
another and another block to the wall of the 
eternal prison in which it chains itself. Evil 
continued until its consequences are felt — this 
is so much hell. 



WHERE IS HELL? 133 

" But we have no time to exhaust the argu- 
ment. No figure ever equals the fact, as we 
have said, so no description of the outcome of 
evil in the universe equals the reality. Human 
language is inadequate to the task. The laws 
proclaimed by science prove that man, through 
evil in his nature, makes a hell for himself in 
that locality where his evil peculiarities ulti- 
mately consign him, to that of which fire and 
brimstone is no exaggerated comparison." 

"You put it strong," said the skeptio. 

"Suffering makes all places hell — just as 
mental suffering is greater than bodily suffer- 
ing, so its hell is worse," said the preacher. 
"We have been taught that hell is a locality; 
and so it is. The shadow and the beam 
have each its place. But, as a village is 
nothing to an empire, to a continent, to a 
hemisphere; as the centre is nothing to the 
circumfereDce; as a point is nothing to all 
space; so is the placed hell of past teachings as 
nothing to the unplaced hell of science. To 
the evil ' all places are hell. ' Hell is in the 



134 AFTER DEATH— WHAT I 

presence of broken law, whether in mind or 
matter, in time or eternity. It is where heaven 
is not. There is nothing more ubiquitous or 
relentless than Nature's pursuit and punish- 
ment of disobedience. Nature brands all 
offenders, and never lets up; never forgets or 
forgives; never stops striking direct or conse- 
quential blows. ' The mind is its own place.' 
To the maniac, moral or mental, there is omni- 
present horror; fire and water, light and dark- 
ness, are alike the ' lake of brimstone ' and the 
' undying worm. ' And to science there is no 
escape, no mercy, no pardon, no sympathy, no 
change, no death. Science shows that all 
things, even evil, are horribly persistent. 

"The pain (punishment) of it may be ' ever- 
lasting.' But, since Christ came, yea, since 
He was promised, man need not endure it for 
one second hereafter. Evolution is a continu- 
ous effect from a continuous cause, or the 
persistence of operative law; but even effects, 
as distinguished from the process of evolution, 
if you choose to make such a distinction, survive 



WHERE IS HELL? 135 

the causes that originate them. A moment of 
sin oftentimes plants disease that no time can 
efface. The pain will be as long as the life. 
So, in the other world, the pain is as long as the 
sin. Pain (punishment) expires when the sin 
expires; but when is that to be, apart from the 
blood of Christ, which alone cleanses from all 
sin ? Sin is never exhausted from any inherent 
weakness. The disgrace of a crime which it 
took but a moment to commit, is indelible upon 
reputation and happiness. Christ intervened 
to save the guilty, even with his life. When 
this proves unavailing, evil proves in them an 
everlasting persistence, whether you consider 
it an evolution or an effect; and when that fail- 
ure is finally ascertained, the soul is no longer 
that of a child, but that of an enemy. Then it 
will go where enemies go. As a vile thing, it 
will go with the vile. Of one thing we may be 
certain, and that is, that God will keep every 
soul out of pain as long as that exemption will 
avail. But if he exhausts his means here, he 
need not repeat them there. God does not 



136 AFTER DEATH—WHAT? 

hurl the wicked into punishment; they 'go 
away ' into fires made everlasting— not for man, 
but for the devil. Thus — 

The Law of Affinity proves a hell. 

The Law of Association proves it. 

The Law of Growth proves it. 

The Law of Propagation proves it. 

The Law of Involution proves it. 

The Law of Evolution proves it. 

"As has been said, great mercy implies 
great guilt, and great guilt can hardly complain 
of great injustice, whatever may be the sen- 
tence. 

" ' In the eternal fitness of things ' God saves 
his children from everything they ask him to 
save them from — yes, from every pain they 
will permit him to save them from. Even if 
through inexperience and unbelief men com- 
mit the sins they wish to commit, they take 
the risk of the pain, not realizing that every 
sin involves a violation of a law of happiness, 
and evolves a consequent pain. Christ bore our 
pain (Isa. lviii.) If we refuse Him, what have 



HELL A NECESSITY. 137 

we left ? Though a creature of limited free- 
dom, man's future is necessarily and ultimately 
very much in his own hands. 

Life is an endless curse — 

Life is an endless bliss — 
Life in the other world 

Is as we choose in this. 

" Having considered hell as a place anywhere 
and everywhere out of heaven, and as an effect 
from disobedience as a cause, let us now con- 
sider pain : first, as a means that God, the 
Father, uses to bless us ; second, as a result 
from our own character." 

" Consider what you like," said the skeptic, 
" I will hear you on." 



II. 

The Pain {Punishment) "which 
our Heavenly Father Visits 
upon his Children of Earth 
is Always as a Means, and 
Never as an End. 

"But," says the skeptic, " suppose I do be- 
lieve in my individual immortality ? Suppose 
I believe in a personal God — a Father to all his 
creatures, and of too benevolent a nature to 
doom one of them to everlasting torments for 
the sins of this short life ? " 

" Ah ! " says the preacher, u we are now to 
consider the moral economy of an infinite Per- 
son, rather than the blind evolution of merely 
infinite Power. Some moral factors now come 
into view. You believe there is a distinction 
between right and wrong ? " 

"Yes," answers the skeptic. 



DOES SUFFERING REFORM? 139 

" Suppose a soul does wrong, how does the 
wrons: act affect his life ? " 

" He suffers for it here." 

" Does suffering reform the soul ? Criminals 
are chronic sufferers, and are not thereby the 
least improved or purified." 

"But," it was replied, " suppose that in 
the other world, we shall have more light, and 
think as our Heavenly Father would have us ? " 

"You then believe with Socrates, that if 
men knew the right they would certainly doit." 

"Yes ; I think Socrates one of the greatest 
men that ever lived." 

"Does not the thief," remarked the preacher, 
" who steals your watch, know that he is doing 
wrong ? If he knows no better, he can do no 
better ; why do you punish him ? " 

"I admit that intellectual knowledge is not 
moral power," answered the skeptic ; u but I 
must come back to the proposition, that God — 
and I admit one for the sake of the argument — 
is too good to create a vast lake, and kindle up 
an inextinguishable fire of brimstone, or cod- 



140 AFTER DEATH— WHAT ? 

struct any other similar horror in which to put 
his child. Would you, as a parent, put your 
child in any such place, even for one second, 
much less for eternity, no matter what he 
might have done ? I know you would not. 
Nor has God any such future for any of his 
creatures." 

" I am glad to hear you so earnest in your 
appreciation of the Fatherhood of God. He is a 
Father so long as we are children ; but when 
we become irreverent, ungrateful and vicious, 
what do you say as to his sovereignty ? " 

"His sovereignty — nonsense ! ' : says the 
skeptic. 

" You break one of his laws, and see if there 
be any nonsense in the result," replies the 
preacher. " God loves, but he rules, and it 
would be a dark day for the universe if he 
ceased to rule." 

" True,'' quickly responds the skeptic ; " he 
rules by general, invariable laws, that neither 
turn nor cease." 

"You believe in these laws, do you?" in- 
quired the preacher. 



IS GOD UNJUST? 141 

" As firmly as you do." 
" Thanks ; we can now go on — " 
" To hell? " sarcastically inquires the skep- 
tic?" 

" ]^ot with me, I trust," replied the preacher ; 
"if you go there you must go alone. Neither 
God nor man sends you there. You simply go 
by the urgency of something evil within you." 
" By what law ? If God has put within me 
a law that sends me to your hell, I would curse 
him and die. As you represent God," contin- 
ued the skeptic, " you make him an unjust and 
merciless monster. Is it just to make the one 
sin of Adam, in which no one feels any partici- 
pation, and for which no one feels personally 
responsible, the ground of the death, whether 
temporary or eternal, of every or of any de- 
scendant of Adam ? Is this the award of your 
God of pity?" 

"We claim that, although men had sinned 
and brought death into our world, yet God so 
loved the world that he gave his only begotten 
Son, that whosoever believeth in him should 



142 AFTER DEATH— WHAT 1 

have everlasting life. But looking at the mat- 
ter as you do, has nature, which is to you what 
my God is to me, any more justice or pity ? " 
replied the preacher. " Death is here, with 
or without a reason. If nature brings death, 
and nature has no reason for it, then nature is a 
monster. If nature has a reason, what is it ? " 

"It is as natural to die as to be born," said 
the skeptic. " Death is not a punishment 
based on moral reasons, but an ordinance of 
nature, sin or no sin. Vfhy should your God 
kill a little bird for the sin of Adam ? " 

" Why," replied the preacher, " should your 
nature kill a little bird for no sin at all, of any 
one ? We say that man sinned, and death 
came into the world as a consequence. You 
say that sin, if there be any, had nothing to do 
with it. Instead of believing that there is 
a God who smites with a reason, you prefer to 
believe that there is no God, and nature smites 
without a reason. Any way, your bitterness 
will not help you to light," quietly remarked 
the preacher. 



THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD. 143 



1. False Ideas of the Fatherhood of God. 

" In our last talk respecting the fact and 
locality of hell," said the skeptic, " you spoke 
of evil having no power within to stop itself, 
and you illustrated your idea by alluding to a 
falling ball, which would fall forever, unless 
arrested by some other body or some resistive 
force. How, then, according to such views of 
the nature of things, can any one be saved ? " 

u That's a problem for you skeptics to answer. 
I confess that, looking at the constitution of 
things as you do, I do not see how any one can 
be saved." 

" But," insisted the skeptic, " suppose I am 
persuaded of the immortality of the soul — of 
the distinction between right and wrong — of 
the punishment here for all the wrongs we com- 
mit — and of the existence of a God; do you 
think it possible for him to punish forever, in 
burning brimstone, one of his poor, weak, 
blind children of earth, for acting, sinfully if 



144 AFTER DEATH— WHAT ? 

you choose to call it so, in the line of weakness 
which He himself gave ? " ' 

" So changeable are the objections of skepti- 
cism," replied the preacher, " that it is no easy 
task to run them all down. They come around 
in periods, and rage as epidemics. As the 
stomach, long fed upon dainties, becomes mor- 
bid, so the mind, long cultivated in subtle spec- 
ulation, leading to no satisfactory conclusions, 
becomes dyspeptic and despairing. One puts 
himself down on the plane of nature among the 
bugs and stones and trees, and tries to persuade 
himself that he will die, and like 

' Imperious Csesar, dead, and turned to clay, 
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away/ 

" Another hopes to rise from nature to super- 
nature, and, 

* aloft ascending, breathe in worlds 
To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil.' " 

" You but aptly describe the future of the 
human soul, if it has a future," earnestly added 
the skeptic. " I expect for myself and all of my 



THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD. 145 

race, upon the theory of the immortality of the 
sou], an eternity of happiness prepared by a 
Father of infinite love and wisdom for all his 
children alike. Our Heavenly Father would 
no more put one of his children in everlasting 
fire than you would put the end of your child's 
finger in the fire for one minute. Would he ? 
Now answer me candidly, as a father, and not 
as an advocate trying to make out a case. It 
is a pity for the progress of truth in the world 
that you preachers have to pretend to believe 
so much, and argue against what must be your 
convictions, to keep up your churches and 
salaries.' ' 

" Most preachers can make far more at any- 
thing else than they do at preaching ; but," 
continued the preacher, " let us keep to the 
question. You form your idea of God's father- 
hood from the sentiments, shortsightedness and 
weaknesses of your own fatherhood." 

u Well, bow else," inquired the skeptic, 
"can I form an idea of God's fatherhood ? Do 
you not say that I am made in his image ? " 

7 



146 AFTER DEATH— WHAT 1 

"If you are," replied the preacher, "the 
mould got a flaw in it before the cast was made. 
It is rather a slur on God to say, because we 
have started in his image, that we are so now. 
The world has never seen anything particularly 
divine in the Benedict Arnolds, and Neros, and 
Judases, and no one ever supposed that the 
cells of San Quentin were cloisters of the gods, 
or any very near kin to them. But let me ask 
you a few questions : You would not let your 
child writhe under the toothache, if you could 
help it, would you ? " 

"No, of course," answered the skeptic. 

" God does let his children have a thousand 
toothaches," answered the preacher. "You 
would not let your child groan under the bur- 
dens of poverty, would you ? ' ' 

" You can well suppose I would not," replied 
the skeptic. 

"God not only lets his children be poor," 
said the preacher, " but he lets them starve, 
and go naked, and houseless, though he gives 
the birds their nests in the trees, and the foxes 



THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD. 147 

their holes in the ground. You would not let 
your children get drunk, steal, and rob, and go 
into prison, if you could help it, would you ? " 

" To ask such a question,'' said the skeptic, 
" is to answer it." 

" Finally, you would not let your children 
sicken and die, and be put in the cold ground 
and decay. You would employ the most 
learned skill to cure them, and undertake the 
most expensive and distant journeys to keep 
them in health. And yet God, able to do far 
more abundantly than we can ask or think, lets 
all his children sufler all this. Do you not think 
your ideas of the fatherhood of God are a little 
mixed ? " inquired the preacher. 

" Mixed with what ? " replied the skeptic. 

" Mixed with the ideas of your own father- 
hood," answered the preacher. 

" Do not the Scriptures and you preachers 
teach us to look at fatherhood in that way ? ' ' 
inquired the skeptic, with a tone of rebuke. 

" Not at all," replied the preacher. " Ideas 
of fatherhood are according to grade of life. 



148 AFTER DEATH— WHAT 1 

A pig's idea of fatherhood, so far as he has 
any, is to teach his offspring to eat, lie down, 
and root in filth. The bee's idea of fatherhood 
is to teach its little ones to hunt for honey, and 
providently put away something for winter. 
The eagle's idea of fatherhood is to teach its 
eaglet to turn its eye up to the sun, and to 
show it how, upon defiant wing, to ride the 
storm, and lose itself as a palpitating spot above 
the lightning's home. Man's too common idea 
of fatherhood is merely to refine his child's 
tastes, give him graceful indulgences, and ena- 
ble him to live without work. How few 
attempt to lift the thoughts of their children 
to any considerations above or beyond this 
world ! " 

" What is God's idea of fatherhood ? " inter- 
posed the skeptic. 

" We know most imperfectly the mind of 
God," replied the preacher. " Nature tells us 
nothing of this fatherhood of God. There is 
no idea of fatherhood in the fetish worship of a 
stone, or a bug, or a rag ; none in the worship 



THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD. 149 

of holy wells, sacred springs and rivers ; none 
in the druidical worship of the oak ; none in 
the Northman's worship of the wolf and the 
bear ; none in the Egyptian worship of the ser- 
pent and the crocodile ; none in the Eastern 
worship of fire and the sun ; none in the Chal- 
dean's worship of the stars." 

"But," asked the skeptic, "does not David 
say that God is a father to the fatherless ? " 

" Yes, and so he is to all who are, or behave 
like, children ; but he is a sovereign to all who 
behave like criminals." 

" Does not Paul speak of him as ' the father 
of mercies '?" 

" Yes. He is rich in mercy to all proper 
subjects of mercy who call upon him. Mercy 
points the penitent to a happy life, and rejected 
mercy points the impenitent to a horrible doom; 
great mercy implies great guilt, and great guilt 
evolves a great wretchedness. Mercy can only 
come into play when it is in the power of a 
superior to punish or pardon. But if there can 
be no future suffering, and all go to the same 



150 AFTER DEATH— WHAT ? 

place, the soul can laugh at both God's threat 
of punishment and his offer of pardon. There 
would then be no need of mercy, because there 
would be no danger. 

" Yet, I confess that I do not know how to 
take you. You are sometimes on one system 
and then on another. If I talk of God answer- 
ing prayer, or of his providence, you reply to 
me the general, invariable laws of the universe, 
and reject with skeptical scorn the idea of God 
suspending a general law to answer a special 
wish or prayer of his children. And if I speak 
of the laws of force, and of personal affinity, 
and association and evolution, and so on, lead- 
ing to an inevitable hell in the very nature of 
things, you cry out God is a good Father, and 
all that. Now, the more God governs by law 
the more he is sovereign, and the less he is 
paternal. The more paternal he is, the less 
does he govern by law. Law is on the sover- 
eign side of his character, and his fatherhood 
is on the affectionate side. You make him all 
father or all sovereign, according to the exi- 



THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD. 151 

gency of your argument. The more father the 
less law, and the more law the less father. 
Make your choice, and stand by it." 

"Does not David speak of the Lord pitying 
his creatures, even as a father pitieth his chil- 
dren?" 

" Not exactly that. Let me quote Scripture 
my own way, and I can prove anything out of 
them. You skeptics, and some preachers, 
hastily put out sentiments as Scripture which 
are not so at all. David said, ' Like as a father 
pitieth his own children, even so the Lord is 
merciful unto them that fear him.' 

"Now, be frank with me, my skeptical 
friend, and answer me truly : Do not all who 
believe in universal salvation, or universal and 
final restoration, which some so-called orthodox 
people believe, think that no matter what they 
do — steal, drink, kill, debauch the pure, ruin 
families, oppress the poor and the helpless, lie, 
betray friends and country — that the Lord 
cannot help himself — that he has but one place 
to put them. Do they fear him at all ? Do 



152 AFTER DEATH— WHAT ? 

they ever even talk about fearing him ? Not 
at all/ ' 

u What, then/' asked the skeptic, are the 

2. True Ideas of God's Fatherhood as to 
Pain?" 

"' Ye have forgotten the exhortation which 
speaketh unto you as unto children/ " replied 
the preacher. " ' My son, despise not thou the 
chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art 
rebuked of him, for whom the Lord loveth he 
chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he 
receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God deal- 
eth with you as sons ; for what son is he whom 
the Father chasteneth not ? But if ye be 
without chastisement whereof all are partakers, 
then are ye bastards, and not sons. Further- 
more, we have had fathers of our flesh which 
corrected us, and we have given them rever- 
ence. Shall we not much rather be in subjec- 
tion unto the Father of Spirits, and live ? For 
they, verily, for a few days chastened us after 



GOD'S USE OF PAIN. 153 

their own pleasure, but he for our profit, that 
we might be partakers of his holiness. Now, 
no chastening, for the present, seemeth to be 
joyous, but grievous ; nevertheless, afterward 
it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness 
unto them which are exercised thereby.' 
(Heb. xii: 5-11.) Now our profit is the end 
for which our Father uses the means of pain. 

" (a.) God uses Pain as a Present Teacher. — 
Pain prompts thought. The disciple is a 
learner, and discipline is education. All ani- 
mals seem to take knowledge mostly in this way. 
The pain of hunger and disease, and of bodily 
exposure, makes all creatures, from the lowest to 
the highest, actively provident. By the fear of 
pain, we often discipline the brutes that serve 
us, and by that fear we are safe from those that 
would otherwise destroy us. Pain leads to 
knowledge. 

"(6.) God uses Pain as a Corrective. — He 
chastises us to chasten or purify us. This is 
designed to make that right in us which was 
wrong before. If the knowledge of what was 

7* 



154 AFTER DEATH— WHAT ? 

best for our happiness, Sorced upon us in disci- 
pline, led to a change of inner principle, 
corrective pain would be unnecessary. But, 
knowledge is not principle. If the pain which 
God visits upon us in mercy to enlighten us 
through discipline and purify us through chas- 
tisements fail, then 

(c.) God uses Pain to Restrain our Acts. — 
This is merciful to ourselves and others. There 
comes a point in the history of human life when 
God makes the barrier of pain say to us, ' Thus 
far, but no further.' If knowledge will not 
stop us, if no new principles can be implanted 
in us by corrective pain, then arises the ne- 
cessity of restraining pain. This is all pa- 
rental. Like any other father, God uses 
no more pain than the case requires. If he 
uses more than we would, it is because he 
sees more to be necessary than we see, and that 
no less would answer. The weakness of the 
human heart makes it ' spare the rod and spoil 
the child.' There are children so incorrigible 
that even human love neither disciplines any 



GOD'S USE OF PAIN. 155 

more, nor corrects any more, but simply re- 
strains when it can. It is as a means to these 
ends, and for this world, that God causes pain. 
The pain in the world to come is our own act. 
God stands in the way, and says, ' Turn ye, 
turn ye ; why will ye die ? ' ' Whosoever 
cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out.' 
How affectionately he pleads with us, even as 
many an earthly father pleads with a child, to 
be wise and safe. He seeks to protect his crea- 
tures as a hen gathereth her chickens under 
her wings. He has sent sacred kings, inspired 
prophets, and his only Son and his blessed 
Spirit, to turn men from sin and misery. What 
more could he have done that he has not done ? 
Neither his goodness nor his severity avail." 



III. 

Pain {Punishment) Endless as a 
Result of Character— Man's 
Own Act. 

1. Of his Will, Man Refuses the Gift. 

" To give salvation is God's part— to take it, 
man's. ' Ye will not come to me, that ye 
might have life/ (John v : 40.) 'I have 
called, but ye have refused.' 

"I suppose," said the skeptic, "you think 
that 

2. At the Judgment, Souls are Separated 
According to Character." 

" i He shall separate them,' " said the preacher, 
" c one from another, as a shepherd divideth the 
sheep from the goats. And he shall set the 



GOD CURSES NO ONE. 157 

sheep on his right hand, and the goats on the 
left/ Now, these on the left are those incorri- 
gible spirits, to whom the discipline of life in 
vain gave the knowledge of duty to God, to 
themselves, and to others — in whom the cor- 
rections of the Father wrought no purification 
— who resisted the good persuasions of the 
Spirit — who were insensible to the mission of 
the Son — whom God could not make better 
people, consistent with their freedom, and was 
compelled, so to speak, to restrain them, in life 
and time. Now, what is to be done with them ? 
They would yield to nothing in life but the 
restraint of pain, and what else will they yield 
to in eternity ? By character they are not fit 
for heaven ; but where else can they go ? 
Notice, that God does not then curse them. 
When he says ' Depart, ye cursed,' he does not 
doom, but only describes them. He makes no 
new state, but simply announces the old one 
man made for himself. Their incorrigible 
character is their curse. As even man saw 
that nothing would make them better in time, 



158 AFTEK, DEATH— WHAT? 

so God sees that nothing will make them better 
in eternity. God has shown his desire to .save 
them, but he says unto them here and now, 
' Ye will not come unto me, that ye might 
have life.' For the devil and his angels God 
provided a hell, anticipating its necessity, but 
offered no salvation, as that would have been 
useless to such terrible offenders ; but for man 
he provided a salvation, anticipating, as it were, 
its universal acceptance, and of course provided 
no place of punishment. As man had followed 
Satan in time, there was no alternative but to 
make him his companion for eternity. Like to 
like. Each one goes to his own place — to the 
place and condition most suitable to his charac- 
ter. From Christ's known attribute of love, 
we may suppose that there will be no ven- 
geance in his tone when he, as the Judge, shall 
say : c I called, but ye refused ; ' depart, you 
who have cursed yourselves, who have made 
yourselves incurably vile ; depart to the only 
place suitable to you — to a place prepared, not 
for you, but for the devil and his angels. 



GOD CURSES NO ONE. 159 

'And these shall go away into everlasting pun- 
ishment, (or pain) but the righteous into life 
eternal. ' ' ' 



IV. 

Salvation God's Act in One of 
Three Ways. 

"Now, as I look at it," continued the 
preacher, " there is but one of three ways by 
which man can be saved. 

1. As a Destiny. 

"(a.) Universal at Death, — According to 
some, after man, like the falling ball, began to 
run down in moral and spiritual life, he was 
arrested by a decree of destiny. It was 
ordered, without consulting him, without any 
merit on his part, that he should stop falling, 
and begin to rise toward and ultimately into 
heaven." 

" Well," inquired the skeptic, "why is not 
that a good way ? Man has no trouble with 



SALVATION AS A DESTINY. 161 

that sort of an arrangement. He was falling 
before, because having gotten into the down- 
ward grade he could not help himself, and this 
way of destiny is only the reverse movement. 
Some foreign power takes hold of a lost soul, 
turns it round, and starts it upon the opposite 
course, along which it must go, whether it will 
or no. I rather like that way. What is the 
objection to it ? " 

"There certainly seems to be this one," 
replied the preacher: "to turn man before he 
wants to turn, makes heaven a necessity. A 
necessary heaven, constituted as man is, be- 
comes a necessary hell. Constraint begets no 
love. Where love is not, heaven is not. If 
the immortal spirit finds no hell in the eternal 
spaces of God, it will not thank God for the 
gift of a heaven he could not withhold. It 
would claim heaven to be its own appropriate 
necessity, as much as God's. Thence would 
arise the bold assertion of equality with God, 
because God and man would be equally and 
inevitably happy, though differing in moral 



162 AFTER DEATH— WHAT 1 

worth as widely as good and evil. As heaven 
is God's personal home, if there be no hell, 
then God would be compelled to stay there 
with all the wicked souls who rebelled against 
him and defied his power. They never would 
grow better in heaven, for there would be no 
motive to repent. God would have to keep 
them there, for, if there be no hell, there would 
be nowhere else to put them. This would not 
make a heaven for the bad, but it would make a 
hell for the good. I don't think that God is so 
scant of space that he could not get out of that 
society. But there is no danger of such a pre- 
dicament. The wicked can no more obtrude 
upon the society of God, than darkness can 
invade the sun. If destiny thrusts salvation on 
some, and compels them to be saved, I do not 
see why destiny could not be amiable about it 
and thrust it on all, and compel all to be saved 
as well as a few." 

" Well, that is exactly what I say," respond- 
ed the skeptic. " What can hair-splitting rea- 
soning answer to that ? " 



SALVATION NOT UNIVERSAL. 163 

44 Why, simply this," remarked the preacher, 
" salvation, by compulsion, is no salvation.'' 

44 Do you mean to say that if God were to 
coerce man into salvation, he would be per- 
verse, and defeat God's benevolent inten- 
tions ? " 

44 Something like that. Constituted as man 
is, a benefit you compel man to accept is not 
valued, and ceases to be a benefit to him. Man 
values most that which he longs for, and begs 
for, and fights for. ' ' 

(6.) The Destiny of Universal Salvation by 
the Final Restoration of all Souls. — " As to 
God's laws," said the skeptic, " do they not 
work out an ultimate restoration of all things ? 
From decay, does there not come a new life ? 
Does not light succeed the darkness ? Are we 
not to have a new heavens and a new earth ? " 

44 Yes, but that is to create something new, 
not reconstruct or restore anything old, which 
is to be burnt up," answered the preacher, 
44 but the theory of evolution remorselessly for- 
bids restoration. The barbed arrow may go 



164 AFTEH DEATH— WHAT? 

forward, but not backward. Evolution may 
develop a thing that has a start, but not make 
it something else. To be restored we must be 
changed. If man can change in the other 
world, either he must change himself from 
within, which I say, according to the laws of 
evolution, is impossible, or be changed from 
without, which you say, also according to the 
laws of evolution, is impossible/ ' 

" Why do you say that change from within 
is impossible ? " inquired the skeptic. 

"Because,'' answered the preacher, "the 
change must be so great as to amount to a new 
creature, and transmutation is unknown in 
nature. Iron cannot metamorphose itself into 
gold, nor tares into wheat. There is a differ- 
ence between restoring old things and creating 
new ones. God could regenerate what man 
degenerates ; but that would conflict with 
evolution, and make restoration come from 
help without, which evolution denies, as all its 
energies are from within." 

"Please give me, in a few words," said the 



EVIL PROGRESSES FOREVER. 165 

skeptic, " your ideas of evolution, which seems 
to be your horror." 

"It is not my horror, at all," replied the 
preacher. " It matters not what evolution is, 
God is its master. But, to answer your ques- 
tion. Definitions differ as to what evolution is. 
Anything evolved is, like a blush, evolved from 
a thought within or behind it. The evil soul 
can evolve only evil thoughts, just as water 
cannot rise above its own level. Evolution, as 
before said, is an unfolding. It is not the 
substitution of one thing for another, but simply 
more of the same thing. Evil cannot be 
evolved into good, nor good into evil. There 
may be an obliteration of the one, and a substi- 
tution of the other ; but that would be a divine 
act, not a blind evolution. Evolution requires 
an evil soul to progress forever, and admits of 
no change which could be called restoration. 

" But there is another view of this hope of 
ultimate restoration which has a frightful out- 
look, and it is this : the principle that admits 
the possibility of departed spirits changing 



166 AFTER DEATH— WHAT 1 

themselves, or of being changed in the future 
world, threatens to depopulate heaven quite as 
much as it promises to exhaust hell. If the 
bad man can become good hereafter, (as I 
could wish) and finally be saved, may not the 
good possibly become bad hereafter, and finally 
be lost ? As man is more inclined to evil than 
to good, there is solemn danger that the natu- 
ral possibility of change after death, instead of 
restoring the bad, would only endanger the 
safety of the good. What the Bible says about 
this whole matter, is another thing.'' 

"Keep to the field of law," said the skeptic. 

" Very well," replied the preacher, " I prefer 
to stick to that line of argument, or confessedly 
change it to some other, but not attempt to be 
on both sides of the fence at once. But, as 
you insist that we shall continue to argue on 
the side of law, let me ask, Are these laws 
changeable or unchangeable ? " 

"Why, unchangeable, of course," was the 
skeptic's prompt reply. 

"Then," replied the preacher, "there can 



TARES CONTINUE TARES. 167 

be no restoration. Blind law cannot change 
itself. It can design nothing. It cannot pre- 
fer one thing to another. It cannot divert 
things into new departures, because it has no 
intelligence, and can see no necessity for a new 
departure. To it, death and decay are the 
same as life and renewal. According to that 
nature of things which so attracts and deludes 
you, a soul, like a fall, enters eternity on the 
downward grade, with no power within to stop 
itself. Now if, with all the motives it had in this 
world, it did not stop, what is to stop it there ? 
Some foreign power must intervene. But if it 
yielded to no other intervention here, when it 
had persuasions of the most affecting nature, 
can it hope for more there ? If tares will not 
turn into wheat while they stand in a field of 
wheat, is it more likely that they will turn into 
wheat when they are off in a field by them- 
selves ? Is it not more likely that bad people 
will amend when they are associating with the 
good, than when they are all grouped off by 
themselves ? It seems to me that when bad 



168 AFTER DEATH— WHAT 1 

spirits draw off in the other world from all the 
restraints and persuasions that surround them 
here, their chance for restoration becomes 
every second less and less. And the proba- 
bility of their restoration, according to the ter- 
rible laws of science, becomes inversely less 
according to the square of time and distance 
from the isolations of the evil at death. If the 
chance of restoration one year after death be, say 
2 less, at two years it would be 4, at three years it 
would be 16, and so on until there would be no 
chance at all. And we see this law at work 
here. The more we indulge in sin, the more 
we can indulge. Insensibility to motives, we> 
see, grows rapidly upon men. We see men, 
after leaving pious parents and homes, get 
further and further off from the best influence 
of their lives, until finally they laugh at all 
sacred things. I do not see fallen men restore 
themselves here, where everything helps res- 
toration, and I cannot see how it can be there, 
where everything seems to hinder and forbid 
it. There is one unanswerable proposition to 



NO HELL, NO HEAVEN. 169 

this whole idea of universal salvation. It is 
this : To save all is to save none/' 

"Well," said the skeptic, "(excuse me for 
saying it) you do have some very queer if not 
absurd ways of putting things." 

" That may be," replied the preacher, " but 
a congeries of all sorts of animals in one cage 
do not seem to form a very happy community. 
The birds are not happy while the snake 
writhes around on the floor and fixes upon them 
its small, hungry, dreadful eyes ; the monkeys 
are not happy when the porcupine moves. 
Every one is in each other's way ; all are un- 
natural, gloomy, without congeniality or possi- 
ble companionship. Nobody is happy. A 
universal heaven is a universal hell, or, in other 
words, ' No hell, no heaven.' Salvation as a 
destiny is a necessity — a compulsion — something 
from which man cannot escape : in other words, 
a man is most unhappy when compelled to be 
happy." 

" Well, then," was the reply, 

8 



170 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? 

2. "Let Man Achieve Salvation for Him- 
self." 

" That is impossible/ ' replied the preacher, 
"for as long as God is God, he could not sell 
salvation, and as long as man is man, he could 
not buy it. God needs nothing that man has ; 
besides, if it were not so, man has nothing that 
is not already God's. The gold and the silver, 
the cattle upon a thousand hills, the land, and 
all that we have and are already belong to God. 
If we cannot buy salvation with wealth, can we 
any more certainly achieve it by deeds ? If so, 
whose deeds ? There is none that doeth good ; 
no, not one. No man was ever universally 
approved, or, other men being the judge, ever 
deserved salvation. ' The trail of the serpent 
is over all ' we do. Out of the kind side of the 
heart may come a number of kindly acts, but 
out of the larger, weak, ignorant, vicious side 
will come many more wicked acts. A moral 
balance sheet of the life of humanity will show 
a hideous moral deficiency. A true human 



SALVATION AS A GIFT. 171 

history would be nothing more or less than a 
police gazette of the race." 

" You seem to be hard to please," said the 
skeptic. " You think it impracticable to save 
man by compulsion or destiny, or by arranging 
it so that he could not be lost if he would ; and 
you put man down among the pauper class, as 
to the means of purchasing his safety, or you 
make the achievement of his salvation a moral 
failure, and I suppose you would equally object 
to his 

3. " Salvation as a Gift." 

"Not in the least," replied the preacher. 
" That is the only way, in my judgment, he can 
be saved. Salvation must be either a destiny, 
a human achievement either by purchase or 
deeds, or a gift. The constitution of the human 
mind requires it to be the last. To have heaven 
or salvation thrust on man by the compulsion of 
destiny, would seem to imply that he would not 
take it without such compulsion, either because 
he did not suit the place or because the place 



172 AFTER DEATH— WHAT % 

did not suit him. Heaven is no prison, nor are 
its inhabitants victims. And yet man would 
not buy a cheap heaven, nor thank God for one 
he himself had merited. Man cannot deserve 
the heaven that he desires, nor does he desire 
the heaven that he can deserve." 



'Tis clear, salvation's either thrust on man, 
Deserved by man, or won for man. How else ? 
If thrust on man 'tis thrust on some or all. 
If thrust on some 't is hard not thrust on all ; 
If thrust on all 'tis thrust on none. 'Tis plain, 
One place is not for all — no Hell, no Heaven. 
Deserved by man, salvation is a right, 
And as a right is not. We take, not earn. 
'Gainst God, no rights, in guilt or innocence. 
'Tis won for man by Christ. He gives to men 
What neither men could buy nor God could sell, 
Or force upon acceptance. Other hope 
Is not, nor need for more in life or death. 
We choose the end, but God the means we use. 
If saved by Christ, then saved by Christ alone. 
By grace He saves through faith His offered gift. 
All deathless hopes hang on a deathless God. 

Both tares and wheat alike 

Drink in the sun ; 
The growth is base and good— 

The life is one. 
But when the Reapers come, 

They both shall fall ; 
And each its place shall take, 

Then endless all. 



v. 

The Skeptic as a Mourner. 

"Good evening," said the preacher, as one 
day on his way home he met his friend, the 
skeptic. " I sympathize with you most sincere- 
ly, in your recent great affliction." 

" Thank you, most kindly," returned the 
skeptic, offering his hand; "and I with you, 
sir." 

"The sentiment of sympathy is itself a sor- 
row," said the preacher. " From the depths of 
my own affliction, I have thought of you often, 
and prayed to God that as your day so might 
be your strength." 

" And is it so with you ? " asked the skeptic. 
"Does all your faith compensate you for the 
loss of your child ? ' ' 

"I should rejoice to know that you had as 



174 AFTER DEATH— WHAT 1 

much, in the loss of yours,' ' replied the preach- 
er. " To die is gain." 

"Can you," asked the skeptic, with tearful 
eyes telling of the agony he would stoically 
conceal ; " Can you, holding the dead form of 
your child in your arms, tell me that ' To die is 
gain ' ? Why do you attempt to comfort your- 
self with such thoughts ? Death is inevitable, 
and men must bear what they cannot avert. 
How is death a gain ? I ask from a grief I 
can neither express nor conceal." 

By this time they had reached the home of 
the preacher. As it was a little on in the even- 
ing, his skeptical friend declined to go in, but 
accepted a chair, for a moment, on the open 
porch. The night was balmy and still. For a 
moment neither spoke, as they turned their 
eyes up to the jeweled doma above them. As 
our hearts are with our treasures, the thoughts 
of each were with the Silent Ones 'far away in 
the Invisible. There was no moon, but the 
stars were out in splendid dominion ; and if 
Nature were God, both of these smitten men 



HOW CAME THE WORLDS HEBE ? 175 

might have knelt in this Temple, built without 
hands, and have worshipped the Supreme 
Glory. The preacher first broke silence : 
pointing to the stars, he said : 

"How came all these worlds here ?" 

"You would not accept my theory," replied 
the skeptic. 

"That theory," replied the preacher, " is 
from your head. This is the hour of your heart. 
What we wish to find in this world, around us, 
is not a constructive Principle, but a sympa- 
thizing Presence. The worlds have come, and 
we are to go. ' ' 

"But where ! " ejaculated the skeptic. "I 
have asked these stars, that look eternal ; but 
they shine aloft in silence, unheeding of human 
agony." 

" The Maker of the stars," said the preacher, 
"knows that our light afflictions, which are 
but for a moment, work out for us a far more 
exceeding and eternal weight of glory." 

" And yet the stars, as heavenly lights in 
heavenly darkness, do answer you ; teaching 
you love and reverence from afar." 



176 AFTER DEATH— WHAT ? 

"I have asked the winds to solve the mys- 
tery of life and death, but they hasten on their 
viewless paths, with a meaningless sigh from 
the great heart of nature." 

" Is it meaningless ? Do the winds in their 
circuits carry no message from zone to zone of 
the power and goodness of the mighty Super- 
intendent ? " 

" Alas ! when I look into the science of 
things, and remember that wind, which howls 
like an infinite fiend or sighs like a saint, is 
only fluent air sliding into a vacuum, my soul 
loses the thought of the beautiful, and nature 
becomes again a soulless fact." 

"But is it soulless ? If before the wind there 
is a vacuum to be filled, what is before the 
vacuum ? Do you not believe in a Provi- 
dence ? " 

" I have tried to believe, but cannot. I can- 
not suppose that God, if there be a God, would 
change his general laws, which are presumed 
to be of such perfect wisdom as neither to 
need nor to admit of change, because I re- 



WHAT IS LAW? 177 

quested him to do so to suit my wishes. What 
motive could I urge before him which was not 
before him at the first, to modify, in my behalf, 
his will as to all ? " 

" The motive is in himself, not in you." 

"What is that?" 

"His love." 

" Did he not love me from the first ? " 

" You did not exist from the first." 

" Did he not begin to love me, then, when I 
began to exist ? " 

"Certainly." 

" Then why should he love me more when I 
pray to him, than at any other time ? " 

" Because you are more lovable." 

"When I ask him to keep a ship, carrying 
my child, from foundering in a storm, I cannot 
suppose that he will interrupt the operation of 
a general law to grant my prayer. ' ' 

" Let me ask you," said the preacher, " what 
is law ? ' ' 

" I should like to hear you answer that." 

" Then law is will. Will is one, as the sun ; 
8* 



178 AFTER DEATH— WHAT ? 

law many, as the rays. As every ray is all 
sun, so is every law all will. The ship at sea 
in a storm is — " 

" Under the operation of a general law, is it 
not?" 

"Why is the wind blowing so fiercely?" 
asked the preacher. 

6 'Because there is a vacuum to be filled." 

" What makes the vacuum ? " 

"Heat." 

" Why should heat make a vacuum ? " 

" Because it rarifies the air, and it rises." 

" Why should rarified air rise ? " 

"Because it is lighter than unratified air 
around it." 

" Why should there be this difference in the 
gravity of air ? ' ' 

" I do not know. Do you ? " 

"I believe," said the preacher, "that the 
general laws of the universe are only the general 
will of some Absolute Being. And law may 
change with the change of the will of the law- 
maker, It is his will that heat should expand 



WHY THE WIND BLOWS. 179 

and rarify the air — that rarified air shall rise 
above the colder and denser air — that colder 
air shall gravitate into the vacuum to fill it — 
that that movement of the air creates a current 
of wind — and that current may be rapid enough 
to rise from a wind to a whirlwind. All the 
way along, what you call law is only will at work. 
No one can say upon what motives He may 
vary the decisions of that will. We see a 
variation in the action of our own wills, and can 
understand how he could vary his. He may 
will that at the spot where the ship is there 
shall be a wall or mountain of cold air below, 
and a region of hot air above, and so curve the 
wind upward and over the ship, to fill the 
vacuum, toward which the wind moves." 

"When," said the skeptic, "I have been 
alone with the thoughts of my precious dead, 
I have asked space in all of its illimitable fields 
to give me back my child. But there was no 
ear to hear, and. no tongue to answer. On the 
surf-washed shore I have called her name, and 
been answered by the eternal requiem of the 



180 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? 

sea. I have challenged the darkness and 
invoked the light ; 1 have climbed the solitary 
mountain and wandered in the sequestered val- 
lies, but nature brings me no message from the 
dead. There is no God and no future. My 
child was, but is not. We are without power 
and without hope. We are nothing." The 
skeptic arose, and walked up and down, moved 
by his deep, intense agony. With his hands 
convulsively clenched, and heaving breast, he 
said: " I would, but cannot, strike this Nature 
that creates but to crush. I would tear her 
from her heartless throne, and stamp out her 
soul as she stamps out mine. Terrible, piti- 
less, remorseless power ! In vain all fears 
have implored her to spare; in vain all loves 
have been sacrificed at her altar; in vain all 
hearts have broken at her feet. Nature is 
omnipresent, omnipotent, eternal Hatred. She 
loves and spares nothing. She never pauses, 
but on and on, the great Tomb-builder moves, 
without pity or remorse. Life is a doom. Of 
all the past, nothing lives. Nor shall anything 



NATURE IS HEARTLESS. 181 

live that is yet to come. The first breath 
presages the last. The bloom on the cheek 
invites the worm to its feast." He stopped, 
and though the stars still shone aloft, telling 
glorious things to all the world who could 
receive them, he looked hopelessly out into the 
dark ; for Nature has no darkness like a dark- 
ened soul. Nature gave and Nature took away 
his child, annihilating its own gift. To him 
who had worshiped knowledge and sneered at 
faith, his child had ceased to be; and, even if 
immortal, dreadful death stood between them 
and before him. To curse was not to conquer 
his master. He stood despairing on the shore 
of an unlighted and unexplored ocean, await- 
ing the inky wave commissioned to sweep him 
into its unfathomable caverns of nothingness. 
Silently he offered his hand to the preacher, 
and walked away, without hope and without 
God in the world. The preacher entered the 
house and sought his closet, and, kneeling be- 
fore the God of all comfort, prayed for light to 
the prayerless, and for strength to the weak. 



182 AFTER DEATH— WHAT 1 

In his own affliction, he himself reached on 
from the past to the future, from mortality to 
immortality, and all was peace. 

When they next met, the skeptic was more 
composed, but not more resigned. He said to 
the preacher: " I have tried to believe as you 
do, but cannot. You trust in a Supreme Per- 
son, I see nothing but Supreme Power." 

" With either at the head of the universe," 
was the reply, " you may have the comfort of 
future reunions with your dead. In all our 
conversations I have discussed with you upon 
the subject of 

" Hell as a Certainty oe Evolution. 

" I now ask you to consider 

"Heaven as a Certainty oe Involution. 

" Herbert Spencer defines evolution to be 
c the integration of matter and the dissipation 
of motion.' But involution is before evolu- 
tion, as matter must first involve integrating 
force before it can integrate, and motion dissi- 



THE HEAVEN OF SCIENCE. 183 

pating force before it can dissipate. The thing 
environed precedes the environment. The 
soil was before the seed. Seeds are adapted 
to environment, and environment to the seed. 
We evolve hell from our own natures, aud 
we involve heaven from the nature of anoth- 
er. The Nazarene said: 'No man can come 
to me except the Father, which sent me, 
draw him.' Evolution, primarily, is a process 
of development; involution, primarily, is a law 
of help. Evolution is what we let out; involu- 
tion is what we take in. We go down of 
ourselves; we go up by help of another. Evil 
we inherit ; good we acquire. In ourselves, 
which we evolve, we are weak. We are 
strongest who appropriate or absorb the 
strength of others. Every individuality of 
men and things is a sort of corporation sole, that 
aggregates the unity into itself as a group. 
Evolution is the least, as it unrolls only our- 
selves; involution is the greatest, as it appro- 
priates the strength of others. Evolution and 
involution, in one sense, are the same, and one 



184 AFTER DEATH— WHAT ! 

is as certain as the other. This is the only 
difference, if any: Evolution of evil goes on 
with the nature it has, under the help of evil 
environment. Involution of good implies, first, 
a taking in of something we did not have, as, 
for instance, a regenerating grace into our evil 
hearts, and then a going on with our new 
nature under the help of good environment. 
In other words, in evolution environment helps 
on the old ; in involution, environment first re- 
news and then helps on the new. Excuse me if 
I repeat my ideas in the effort to be understood. 
I have not asked you to trust and adore my 
God, but to look into the future by the light, 
however feeble, of your own science. Both 
evolution and involution open to us the gates 
of eternal life. Indeed, evolution is but one of 
God's ways of working in matter from within. 
Involution is God's way in matter from without. 
So involution is God's way of operating upon 
the spirit of man from above man. Man in- 
volves the spirit of God, and becomes a new 
creature. He continues to involve that spirit, 



WE INHERIT EVIL : WE ACQUIRE GOOD. 185 

and continues to grow in his new character. 
Evolving his own nature, he goes down. In- 
volving more and more of his new nature, he 
goes up. Still, as you do not yet accept the 
conception of a Divine Person, let us take all 
possible hope from the progressive energies of 
a universal Power. 

"We inherit evil; we acquire good. As 
what we are not, is so infinitely more than what 
we are, we grow by appropriating or by absorb- 
ing from our environment ; and he grows the 
most that appropriates or absorbs the most. 
Eternal wretchedness is evolved from an evil 
nature, by involving much evil and little good. 
Eternal happiness is evolved from a renewed 
nature, by involving little evil and much good. 
Unconscious absorption of evil or conscious ap- 
propriation of good is the secret of soul-growth 
in either direction. We become giants, if we 
can add a giant's strength to our own. As 
trees are tall by growing towards the sun that 
warms them, so we grow Godward, just as we 
take in, from our environment, God's life. We 



186 AFTER DEATH— WHAT ? 

are made up of everything around us, and we 
are that of which we have the most. Do not 
circumstances enter so largely into our charac- 
ters, that we may say that character is the psy- 
chology of circumstance ? Our responsibility 
coincides with the freedom and activity of will- 
power. How far circumstance coerces us, and 
how far we refuse to be coerced, is not always 
evident. All the links of the chain of remote 
and immediate cause are not in sight. We see 
not the attachment of their ends." 

Both are illustrated in the parable of the field 
of the tares and the wheat. The tare had one 
nature, and the wheat another. Both grew 
side by side in the same soil, warmed by the 
same sun, and softened by the same rain. In 
every respect the environment was the same; 
but each absorbed according to its nature. The 
growth of one was good, the other evil. There- 
fore the first thing to be ascertained is, what is 
the nature of the object to be developed. The 
wheat will at once absorb or involve all its sur- 
roundings from above and below, and quicken 



TO DIE IS GAIN. 187 

into marvellously abundant and valuable life. 

Wheat progresses as wheat, and tares pro- 
gress as tares. Each nature assimilates the 
food according to its own laws, and suitable to 
itself. 

Where we go depends upon what we are and 
what we take into ourselves. We are innately 
inclined to evil. If we take into our evil na- 
tures more evil than good, we make and -go to 
hell, the finality of evil. If we take in more 
good than evil, and enough to eradicate that 
evil, we go to heaven, the finality of good. 
Some think that nature and environment are 
not distinct as parallels, or associated as sub- 
stance and shadow, but that they interact by 
inscrutable conditions of cause and effect, and 
effect and cause. Does the good soil permit 
or cause the seed to spring up ? But if you 
cannot yet reach the conception of a Divine 
person, let us take all possible hope from the 
progressive energies of an universal power. 
All things tell me that to die is gain. ,, 

" Convince me of that," said the skeptic. 



188 AFTER DEATH— WHAT 1 

with the earnestness of a soul seeking the com- 
fort of light, " and you will save me from mad- 
ness. I would give the world, if it were mine, 
to believe that I can ever see my child again." 

" Let us then become calm, and seek the 
truth for the sake of truth, as a sure anchorage 
for our sorely afflicted hearts." 

"Most willingly," remarked the skeptic; 
" but do not take advantage of my weakness 
under bereavement, to commit me to the sway 
of feelings rather than principle. I would be- 
lieve as you do, but cannot. My comfort, if 
any, must come from proofs, not feelings." 

" Or rather from both," remarked the 
preacher. " You do not believe what you 
yourself prove. I do not propose to give any 
new principle, but only ask you to see the force 
of the many-sided principles you have already 
uttered. I understand you to hold, as the doc- 
trine of evolution, that everything progresses 
forever. 

" Most certainly," said the skeptic. 

The preacher continued : "It is well that we 



EVERYTHING PROGRESSES FOREVER. 189 

have gone somewhat over this ground already. 
The law of progress coming on from the un- 
known past, abiding in the present, and enacted 
for the future, is so complete, that no one pres- 
entation of it can exhaust its consideration. 
That which has been said will enable us the 
better to comprehend that which we are now to 
say. 

" As a mourner, you have ceased to be the 
philosopher. Shakspeare says ' that one fire 
ceases with another's burning '; and while your 
heart has gone on, your head has stopped. You 
have already announced every principle I 
should use to lead you through science to the 
comfort I have through revelation, as well as 
science. You hold to a law of progress." 

" Yes," replied the skeptic; " but do we un- 
derstand this law alike ? You state your views 
of this law, and I will say how far we agree or 
disagree." 

"Then," said the preacher, u the universe 
is not a suicide. It tends to continue, not destroy 
itself. Matter persists, force persists, conscious- 
ness persists. ' ' 



190 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? 

" Right here is the difficulty," replied the 
skeptic. "I believe in a law of progress. I 
believe in the persistence of matter, and in the 
persistence of force; but when I see conscious- 
ness leave the eyes of my child, and see a 
change so painful pass over the features and 
form of her body, I must admit its elements to 
persist, but I am compelled to see that her 
form is dissolved forever. It is this fact of my 
observation in which the unchangeable laws of 
science give me no hope." 

" In other words, " said the preacher, " dis- 
solution of the body seems to destroy the 
individual." 

"Yes." 

"But remember that the individual body is 
not the personal soul. We see large minds and 
noble characters in small and most unattractive 
bodies, as if the soul had gotten into the wrong 
form." 

" But when I see my child die, I see no soul 
depart, and have not the slightest evidence 
that anything more is to be expected. No soul 



DEATH A SECRET FOR EACH. 191 

is seen, none speaks. But, as I held the weak, 
suffering form of my dying child, I saw that 
when she ceased to breathe she ceased to know 
me. I saw no soul depart ; none out of 
the body spoke to me then, none speaks to me 
now. If this is not annihilation, what is ? I 
must understand in order to believe/ ' 

"I could satisfy you at once," answered the 
preacher, "if you believed in revelation ; but 
as you do not yet, I must meet you on your 
grounds of material science and speculative 
philosophy, and answer you out of your own 
ideas. All experience, embodied or disem- 
bodied, is individual. The change at death 
is, as before said, a secret for each. You never 
saw the soul of your child in the body, and is it 
surprising that you have not seen it out of the 
body ? She had several bodies during her life 
time, and she seemed to need one no more 
than another/' 

" But she always had a body of some kind." 

" And has now. There is a natural body and 

there is a spiritual body. The natural body 



192 AFTER DEATH— WHAT ? 

constantly changes ; the spiritual body contin- 
ues its identity.'' 

" But what becomes," inquired the skeptic, 
"of the body that is buried ? Prove to me 
that I shall again see the body of my child." 

" You will see your child again, and no more 
doubt her real existence than you did under all 
the changes of this world. To see her in the 
spiritual body she took with her at death, will 
be satisfactory; and to see her in the natural 
body she left for burial, to be spiritualized at 
the resurrection, is a future event alone with 
God." 

"But, it was a pale, emaciated, diseased, and 
exhausted body. Is it your faith that the same 
body, in the same wasted condition, is to be 
restored ? If the identical body is to come out 
of the grave that went in, is the body of the 
blind to come out blind, the headless to come 
out headless ? How about the bodies of in- 
fants and the misshapen ? I would like to get 
your ideas on these points." 

" You only ask the old questions: 'How are 



BODIES AFTER DEATH. 193 

the dead raised up ? ' and. ' With what bodies 
do they come ? ' Do you wish me to refer to 
revelation, or to confine myself to reasons from 
science ? " asked the preacher. 

" I care not, so long as you give me reasons, 
and not dogmas," answered the skeptic. 

" Well, then," replied the preacher, " I will 
quote you what St. Paul says, and if it be con- 
trary to reason, you can reject it : ' That which 
thou sowest is not quickened except it die. 
And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not 
that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may 
chance of wheat, or some other grain. But 
God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, 
and to every seed his own body. All flesh is 
not the same flesh ; but there is one kind of 
flesh of man, another flesh of b.easts, another 
of fishes, and another of birds. There are also 
celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial ; but the 
glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of 
the terrestrial is another. There is one glory 
of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and 
another glory of the stars ; for one star differ- 

9 



194 AFTER DEATH— WHAT ? 

eth from another star in glory. So, also, is the 
resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corrup- 
tion ; it is raised in incorruption. It is sown 
in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in 
weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a 
natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. 
There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual 
body.'" 

"That you may have my difficulties fully 
before you," interrupted the skeptic, "let me. 
say, that I can conceive of no relation between 
the body that dies and the one that is raised. 
There is no resurrection of the old body, if a 
new one is to come. If I understand you, you 
believe that at the resurrection a new body, in 
some way, is to come out of the old one. But 
I cannot see the relation between a body abso- 
lutely dead and a new one. The new must be 
a creation. If j t ou put a grain of wheat in the 
ground, it carries life down into the ground 
with it, and the new wheat comes out of a liv- 
ing seed, not a dead one. But, in all this 
process there is uninterrupted continuance of 



LIFE-POWER CONTINUES. 195 

life. There is no break in the chain of vital 
operations, and consequently we are not embar- 
rassed at all on the score of the relation which 
the new plant bears to the old one. Although 
it undergoes a great change of form, and the 
numerical particles are in a state of constant 
transition, yet, ' so long as we keep our eye 
on the unbroken thread of life, as from the 
old living grain of wheat to the new, we have 
no hesitation in saying that there is a consist- 
ent sense in which it is the same plant." 1 

"It is impossible," replied the preacher, " to 
keep an eye on the thread of life at all. The 
transmission of life from one «;rain of wheat to 

CD 

another is as incomprehensible as the product 
of a new, powerful, glorious, and incorruptible 
body from the old, dead one, buried in weak- 
ness, dishonor, and corruption. The living 
grain of wheat has, in itself, no more self-raising 
power thaii the dead body of man. Power 
comes to it in the ground" 

u The power that comes," remarked the 

iBush on the Resurrection of the Body, p. 51. 



198 AFTER DEATH— WHAT 1 

skeptic, "may quicken into life a seed retain- 
ing the living principle within it, but not raise 
to life the dead body from which the living 
principle has departed." 

"The seed/' replied the preacher, "is not 
quickened except it die. ' In all cases,' says 
Prof. Le Conte, ' vital force is produced by de- 
composition/ The whole process of sprouting 
is a process of dying. Life continues itself, but 
changes and renovates the matter which it 
uses. Life seeks the dead, not the living. 
The minerals over which arose vegetable life, 
had no life in themselves." 

"But the abstract principle I wish to estab- 
lish is this: That power not inherent in matter 
can come to matter ; and if one power can 
come, why not another ? That power comes to 
matter ab extra, is one of the most universal 
certainties in existence ; and the nearer the 
earth the more power comes. You know the 
law of matter to be, that the power of gravita- 
tion varies inversely as the square of the dis- 
tance. That which may be light as a feather at 



THE DEAD RAISED UP. 197 

a given distance above the earth, may be heavy 
as a ton at its surface. As a body falls, rapidly 
increasing power meets it from the earth, and 
hastens its descent. Again, I ask, if matter 
can take one force, then why not another ? " 

"But," interrupted the skeptic, " the seed 
takes the power that helps the living principle 
within, but the dead human body has no living 
principle within to be helped by any power 
that can come to it." 

"But," continued the preacher, "admit 
that when the grain of wheat is buried, it 
carries life down with it into the ground; re- 
member that the life thus carried into the 
ground must die in the ground, before a new 
life can come out of the ground. Decomposi- 
tion precedes the new life in the grain of 
wheat, as much as that of the human body. 
Will science reject, as incomprehensible, the 
raising up of a dead body to life, to be reunited 
to a soul with which it once had a history, and 
accept, as it must, the raising up of a living 
vegetable from a dead mineral with which it 



198 AFTER DEATH— WHAT ? 

■ • ■ 

never had a previous connection or relation of 
any kind ? Why should it be thought a thing 
incredible, with you, that life should rejoin the 
body ? The incredible part is, that life ever 
took hold of dead matter at all, not that it 
should retake the hold after once having had 
it. If you reject one incomprehensibility, why 
not the other ? " 

"Because," replied the skeptic, "I see one 
to be a fact, but not the other." 

" You see life, for the purpose of nutrition, 
relaxing its hold on matter, and retaking it 
every instant," replied the preacher. " You 
admit the incessant renewal of our bodies, mat- 
ter and mind incessantly separating and uniting, 
some particles going and others coming, and 
yet the body remains ever identical." 

"True, true," ejaculated the skeptic, "I 
must admit that there is nothing in the nature 
of things forbidding the living soul to discon- 
nect itself from the matter of the dead body, 
and again to connect itself. But as to the 
body, what end is served thereby ? ' : 



WITH WHAT BODY DO THEY COME ? 199 

"The perfectability of the body," answered 
the preacher. " For causes we need not pause 
to consider now, the body is weak, and there- 
fore sickly and decaying. We say that sin did 
this — but to go on. Life seems, in the pro- 
gress of what you call Nature, to break its 
hold to get a better one. Life is ever exalting 
itself, and holding its ascensions. We are to 
go on to perfection, from glory to glory. If 
this living soul drops the dead matter of the 
body, in corruption, it raises it up in incorrup- 
tion. If it separates from it for a while in dis- 
honor, it, as it were, compensates matter, by 
raising it in glory. If it lets the body fall in 
weakness, it will raise it in invincible power. 
If it parts from the body as a natural one, a 
thing of matter, it will take matter up finally 
and assimilate it with spirit. This is your way 
of evolution — the law of progress. The relation 
of living bodies as effects or products, from 
dead bodies or matter as cause, is an omnip- 
otent fact, whether we comprehend it or not. 
It is a law that a living thing must die iu one 



200 AFTER DEATH— WHAT 1 

plane or sphere of existence in order to live in 
another. The body must be absolutely dead 
in order to live finally. Life drops a wretched 
body in order to pick it up again glorified. 
Nature goes back a little way to acquire mo- 
mentum to go on for ever. Ever and ever, she 
breaks down in order to build up. As you 
value immortality, you must see your privilege 
in dying utterly, in no qualified but an absolute 
sense, that you may live the second life forever. 
There is no reversal of the law, all through the 
universe, there is nothing quickened except it die. 
The renewed connection between life and matter 
in the resurrected body is no greater mystery 
than the original connection between life and 
matter. Unless the material body die, there 
can no more be a new spiritual body than there 
can be new wheat without the death of the old. " 

But^this doctrine teaches that death was a 
course or law of life in nature, sin or no sin," 
said the skeptic. 

" What is death 1 ?" asked the preacher. 

1 " There is no death : what seems so is transition." — Long- 
fellow. 



WE SHALL BE CHANGED. 201 

"In sin or holiness this world was not man's 
home. Here we have no continuing city, says 
one. Sin has brought death as a penalty, as it 
is now here, into our world. But in perfect 
holiness, man without death as we now under- 
stand it, must have gone on to a more spiritual 
nature and home, for flesh and blood cannot in- 
herit the Kingdom of God. We have so far 
come on through a series of material spheres of 
mineral, vegetal, and animal, and the next 
ascension is into a purer and less gross condi- 
tion of existence. Without sin man would 
have been changed to suit his new sphere ; 
but the change would have been not as a purifi- 
cation, but as natural and welcome. On account 
of sin, we seem to throw off our material 
nature differently from what would have been 
necessary in a state of holiness. Our understand- 
ings are darkened. Besides, purification is 
needed. Life drops our material bodies, 
stained with sin, and takes them up at last with 
new power, superior to sin. 

" If," said the skeptic, " death quickens the 



202 AFTER DEATH— WHAT 1 

grain of wheat and man's resurrection-body 

into life, why does it not quicken the body of 

the dead brute into a new life and body ? If 

' death gives life in one case, why not in all ? ,s 

"Death/' replied the preacher, "quickens 
nothing. It is in the appointment of your evo- 
lutionary power, that nothing is quickened 
except it die, but not because it dies. By this 
power, all quickening from death to life is 
obedience not to death, but to the law of prog- 
ress. This Power, or Nature, if you prefer 
so to call it, works upwards in terraces, not on 
levels. Life from death in the grain of wheat 
is an expansive movement from one to many. 
The life of the resurrection-body of conscious 
man is a progressive movement from corrup- 
tion to incorruption, from dishonor to glory, 
from weakness to power, from a natural body 
to a spiritual body." 

" Why should the body of the brute be ex- 
cepted from the benefit of that law of prog- 
ress ? " 

" Because nature does not care for all things 



ARE THE BODIES OF BRUTES RAISED UP ? 203 

alike. She cares more for the strong than for 
the weak; she cares more for the fruitful than 
for the barren ; she cares more for the con- 
scious than the unconscious." 

" But, you say she cares for the unconscious 
grain of wheat ? " 

u Yes; for, in caring for the unconscious 
wheat, she cares for the conscious man. Na- 
ture ever keeps the best in view. Conscious 
man is at the top of things, and all below are 
his supporters. Everything, directly or indi- 
rectly, is to help him. Ceasing to help, they 
cease to be. Man continues because, as we 
have said, consciousness, like force and matter, 
is an independent and imperishable substance. 
But the brute belongs not to the order of con- 
scious beings. Man drops his body at death, 
in order, according to the law of progress, to 
take up a better one at the resurrection.'' 

" When is that? " 

"It matters not, so that there be a resur- 
rection. Any time should satisfy us." 

" Where is the body until the resurrec- 
tion ? " 



204 AFTER DEATH— WHAT ? 

" Wherever nature can best keep it." 

" Where is that ? 

" The Great Power answers: 'What I do 
thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know 
hereafter. ' You may be answered to-morrow, 
to-day, this hour. An answer you will be sure 
to get, and in an hour ye think not. That we 
are to exist personally is a certainty, either in 
bodies now unknown to us, or in our' old ones, 
renovated and restored to us. If we do not get 
back these old bodies, we shall not need or 
miss them; and if we do, we shall be satisfied 
with them. Continued existence is all I ask, 
in the body or out of it. I could expound to 
you the doctrines of the Bible as to a spiritual 
body, the one that met Christ in Paradise, on 
the day of the Crucifixion, but—" 

" At present," said the skeptic, " let us keep 
to the purely scientific or philosophical argu- 
ment, as the one in which I am more at home. 
If you can show me that, in the nature of 
things, there is this future to the soul and this 
resurrection of the body, we may then consult 



THE HEAVEN OF SCIENCE. 205 

what are claimed as authoritative and inspired 
revelations of its character. You have given 
me your argument from my ground of nature, 
as to the fact and character of a future hell ; 
but I should be more gratified to find you make 
as good an argument in favor of a future heaven.' ' 

" The line of a priori argument, or from cause 
to effect, is the same. The law of progress 
necessitates a heaven as much as a hell. The 
only difference is this : we sink to hell by the 
gravitating evil inherent in ourselves. We are 
lifted into heaven by a grace imparted to us, or 
by environment, keeping to scientific terms. 

I claimed before that human nature was a 
fallen thing, and needed not only to be helped 
up, but to be constantly held up. Of itself, it 
would gravitate lower and lower into evil. In 
religious teaching, we would call this help a 
divine grace. You would call it a law of prog- 
ress. As the nature of man, affected, if not 
vitalized, by environment, makes a hell the 
necessity of law; so his nature, changed by 
environment into a new nature, but with un- 



206 AFTER DEATH— WHAT 1 

changed personality, affected, if not continu- 
ously vitalized, by environment, makes a 
heaven by the necessity of law. Nature and 
circumstance are omnipotent in either direc- 
tion." 

" Of course," remarked the skeptic, "in this 
heaven of yours, you hold that we shall know 
each other, as we did here. You expect to 
meet there and to know your daughtei* again ?" 

" Yes, as you may yours," replied the 
preacher. 

'Is ignorance found in the spirit's home? 

Is memory left in the dust ? 
Then shall we not feel that we stand alone, 

As strangers among the just ? 
And can it be so, in that city of light, 
Where love is unfailing and joy ever bright ?" 
Is darkness found in that cloudless sky, 

Veiling the life just past ? 
Forgotten the friend who saw us die, 

All faithful and true to the last ? 
And can it be so ? Shall we meet no more 
When this feverish dream of life is o'er ? ' 

"No, no, my friend, this world is not all. 
One world no more excludes another than one 
moment excludes another, or a cause excludes 
an effect. I expect another world hereafter, 



THE PLEASURES OF HEAVEN. 207 

because I have already had one here. And 
that world will supplement this. 

' Go, wing thy flight from star to star, 
From world to luminous world, as far 

As the universe spreads its flaming walls ; 
Take all the pleasures of all the spheres. 
And multiply each through endless years — 

One minute of heaven is worth them all.' 

" The Peri caught only a glimpse of the glori- 
ous reality. The eye hath not seen, nor the 
ear heard, nor hath it entered the heart to con- 
ceive the good things that God hath reserved 
for those who love Him. And all this is to be 
under the law of progress. If you live, and 
move, and have your being under law, you 
must ever continue under law ; and that law is 
one of progress in good or evil, forever and ever. 
I know no reason why existence should cease. 
This law of progress necessitates a heaven. 
And that same law necessitates that heaven 
shall eternally become more heaven, as hell 
must eternally become more hell. 'The me- 
chanical axiom,' says Spencer, < that, if left to 
itself, matter moving in any direction will con- 



208 AFTER DEATH— WHAT 1 

tinue in that direction with undiminished 
velocity, ' is a law for mind as well as matter, 
for the future as well as the present, for heaven 
as well as for hell, for good as well as for evil." 

"These," said the skeptic, "are truths that 
convince nry head, but how can I make them 
interest my heart ?" 

" By forming new mental habits," replied 
the preacher. "Pray to the Great Being be- 
hind all nature. Instead of educating your- 
self to doubt, seek for thoughts that honor 
Him. When you grasp a law of the universe, 
forget not the Lawgiver." 

Days, weeks, months passed — sorrow keeps 
no record of time — and when they next met, 
the mourning skeptic greeted the preacher 
warmly, and said : " When I reached my home, 
after our last conversation, I opened a Bible 
that had been closed for years, and by a singu- 
lar coincidence, I opened at this sentence: 
'Lord I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.' 
Somehow, that prayer lingers in my mind 



THE PLEASURES OF HEAVEN. 209 

wherever I may be. It seems philosophical, 
that increasing knowledge should enlighten 
and deepen belief. Everywhere is the law of 
repair — call it mercy, if you choose. But 
mercy requires One Merciful. I confess, that 
to conceive this universe to be directed and 
managed by an Infinite Person is no less logical, 
and immeasurably more comforting, than to be- 
lieve it to be only the evolutionary work of an 
Impersonal Power. If there can be a Power, 
there can be a Person, a Governor, a Judge, a 
Friend, a Redeemer, a Christ." 

The two clasped each other's hands, as the 
one holy light of knowledge and faith rested 
in their hearts, and illuminated, for both, the 
same deathless future. By that light, each 
heart bent a longing gaze across the Dark 
River, and tears of joy moistened their eyes, as 
they saw their children standing in joy on the 
other side, with their beautiful hands out- 
stretched to the loved oues on this, beckoning 
them on to 

THE ETERNAL SHORE. 



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